MVC 4 Data Annotations Display Attribute

Question

I am starting out with MVC 4  Razor view engine    I believe this may apply to MVC 3 and earlier as well   I am wondering if there is any benefit to using the DisplayAttribute data annotation within a view versus just writing a string directly in the HTML  For example  if I had the following model   public class Thing       public string WildAndCrazyProperty   get  set           would there be any benefit in annotating the property as        Display Name    Wild and Crazy        public string WildAndCrazyProperty   get  set         and having my markup be    lt html gt       lt body gt           lt div gt  Html DisplayNameFor modelItem   gt  modelItem WildAndCrazyProperty  lt  div gt           lt div gt  Html DisplayFor modelItem   gt  modelItem WildAndCrazyProperty  lt  div gt       lt  body gt   lt  html gt       versus not having the annotation  and doing    lt html gt       lt body gt           lt div gt Wild and Crazy lt  div gt           lt div gt  Html DisplayFor modelItem   gt  modelItem WildAndCrazyProperty  lt  div gt       lt  body gt   lt  html gt    The reason I haven t mentioned Html LabelFor in this case is because the property s data is being displayed as static  i e  non-editable  text on the page  The data will never be editable on this page  so there is no need for me to use Html TextBoxFor within the second  lt div gt  and subsequently use the Html LabelFor to properly associate a label with that text box

User · Answer

Also internationalization  I fooled around with this some a while back   Did this in my model   Display Name    quot XXX quot   ResourceType   typeof Labels     I had a separate class library for all the resources  so I had Labels resx  Labels culture resx  etc  In there I had key   XXX  value    quot meaningful string in that culture  quot

User · Answer

One of the benefits is you can use it in multiple views and have a consistent label text  It is also used by asp net MVC scaffolding to generate the labels text and makes it easier to generate meaningful text   Display Name    Wild and Crazy    public string WildAndCrazyProperty   get  set       Wild and Crazy  shows up consistently wherever you use the property in your application   Sometimes this is not flexible as you might want to change the text in some view  In that case  you will have to use custom markup like in your second example

User · Answer

In addition to the other answers  there is a big benefit to using the DisplayAttribute when you want to localize the fields   You can lookup the name in a localization database using the DisplayAttribute and it will use whatever translation you wish   Also  you can let MVC generate the templates for you by using Html EditorForModel   and it will generate the correct label for you   Ultimately  it s up to you   But the MVC is very  Model-centric   which is why data attributes are applied to models  so that metadata exists in a single place   It s not like it s a huge amount of extra typing you have to do

User · Answer

If two different views are sharing the same model  for instance  maybe one is for mobile output and one is regular   it could be nice to have the string reside in a single place  as metadata on the ViewModel   Additionally  if you had an inherited version of the model that necessitated a different display  it could be useful  For instance   public class BaseViewModel        Display Name    Basic Name        public virtual string Name   get  set       public class OtherViewModel   BaseViewModel        Display Name    Customized Inherited Name        public override string Name   get  set        I ll admit that that example is pretty contrived     Those are the best arguments in favor of using the attribute that I can come up with  My personal opinion is that  for the most part  that sort of thing is best left to the markup

[asp.net] MVC 4 Data Annotations "Display" Attribute

Examples related to asp.net

Examples related to asp.net-mvc

Examples related to asp.net-mvc-4