c# - How to add attributes to a base class's properties

Question

I have a couple model classes like so:

public class MyModelBase
{
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

public class MyModel : MyModelBase
{
    public string SomeOtherProperty { get; set; }
}

How can MyModel add a [Required] attribute to the Name property?

Answer 1

Declare the property in the parent class as virtual:

public class MyModelBase
{
    public virtual string Name { get; set; }
}

public class MyModel : MyModelBase
{
    [Required]
    public override string Name { get; set; }

    public string SomeOtherProperty { get; set; }
}

Or you could use a MetadataType to handle the validation (as long as you're talking about DataAnnotations...otherwise you're stuck with the example above):

class MyModelMetadata
{
    [Required]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public string SomeOtherProperty { get; set; }
}

[MetadataType(typeof(MyModelMetadata))]
public class MyModel : MyModelBase
{
    public string SomeOtherProperty { get; set; }
}