asp.net mvc 2 - How to change [DisplayName"xxx"] in Controller?

Question

Folks,

I am MVC 2 newbie and stuck on this problem:

AccountModuls.cs

public class LogOnModel
{
[Required]
[DisplayName("User name")]
public string UserName { get; set; }
…
}

LogOn.aspx

<%: Html.LabelFor(m => m.UserName) %>

The text “User name” will be finally displayed in the website - based on my definition

[DisplayName("User name")].

No Problem.

But how can I change this text in AccountController.cs?

public ActionResult LogOn()
{   
return View();
}

Answer 1

You can't :) You have to change the DisplayName-attribute on the class in order for the .LabelFor helper to construct the label. You could of course just write out the HTML for the Label yourself if you want it to be something else.

Don't see why you would want to change the Displayname from page to page though? Am I misunderstanding something?

Edit:

Custom displayname attribute:

public class MyDisplayName : DisplayNameAttribute
{
    public int DbId { get; set; }

    public MyDisplayName(int DbId)
    {
        this.DbId = DbId;
    }


    public override string DisplayName
    {
        get
        {
            // Do some db-lookup to retrieve the name
            return "Some string from DBLookup";
        }
    }
}

public class TestModel
{
    [MyDisplayName(2)]
    public string MyTextField { get; set; }
}