Using AutoMapper to copy Metadata from Entities to ViewModels

On my crusade to eliminate common mistakes causing bugs in my projects I found was that my metadata on my entities didn’t always match my viewmodels.  I wrote 2 fairly simple providers to copy the metadata from the entity to the ViewModel at runtime which leverages my AutoMapper configuration so it supports field names that are renamed.


I use the approach below to automatically copy data annotations from my entities to my view model. This ensures that things like StringLength and Required values are always the same for entity/viewmodel.

It works using the Automapper configuration, so works if the properties are named differently on the viewmodel as long as AutoMapper is setup correctly.

You need to create a custom ModelValidatorProvider and custom ModelMetadataProvider to get this to work. My memory on why is a little foggy, but I believe it's so both server and client side validation work, as well as any other formatting you do based on the metadata (eg an asterix next to required fields).

Note: I have simplified my code slightly as I added it below, so there may be a few small issues.

Metadata Provider

Validator Provivder

Helper Method Referenced in above 2 classes

Other Notes
If you're using dependency injection, make sure your container isn't already replacing the built in metadata provider or validator provider. In my case I was using the Ninject.MVC3 package which bound one of them after creating the kernel, I then had to rebind it afterwards so my class was actually used. I was getting exceptions about Required only being allowed to be added once, took most of a day to track it down.


My StackOverflow Post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9989785/technique-for-carrying-metadata-to-view-models-with-automapper/10100042#10100042