Patch to use FriendlyName attributes

Hello,

I have made a few changes to the rules engine, namely:

• ValidationRuleArgs has a new property called FriendlyName which can be used instead of PropertyName to display validation errors.
• A new constructor has been added to ValidationRuleArgs (and all it's subclasses) to optionally accept a friendly name value. If one is not provided, the PropertyName will be used.
• When the column Enum members are generated, the EnumTextValue attribute now uses the FriendlyName instead of the PropertyName value in the mapping file.

When the Entity validation region is generated the following changes were made:

• Currently, the templates provide rules for AllowNulls and Checking the length of a string and were created using the following convention:

ValidationRules.Add(Validation.CommonRules.NotNull, "PropertyName");

This has been changed to utilize the new FriendlyName field which it gets the value from the NetTiers mapping file. IE:

ValidationRules.Add(Validation.CommonRules.NotNull, new ValidationRuleArgs("PropertyName", "Friendly Name"));

• The CanCheckLength method was only returning true if the DataType of the column was StringFixedLength. It now returns true for this as well as if the DataType is String and if the column size doesn't equal -1 (VarChar(MAX)).
• I've also added a new rule handler: SelectionRequired. The rule is generated if the column is a foriegn key member and nulls are not allowed. The handler will return false if the field value is either null or 0. Note:This fits a specific requirement in my project where new FK values are initialized to 0 if a dropdown list is used. Generating the rule on all entities may not be the best for everyone. Perhaps the rule handler can still be available, but the generated rule should be commented out?...

Several files were modified in order to implement these changes, so I'm not exactly sure of the proper way to get those changes to the team members. I've attached a patch file in case it's useful.

Hope the community finds this useful!

Kevin

Kevin,

Thanks for the contribution (checked-in rev. 516). Great implementation.

I've made a change though, hoping you don't mind. I've renamed the SelectionRequired handler to the ForeignKeyValueRequired, and since your logic handles foreignkeys that are numeric, i've put condition in place to check for the key datatype and render ForeignKeyValueRequired or StringRequired handlers.

 [edit] There seem to be already condition in place that performs AllowDBNull check if (! cols[x].AllowDBNull && IsCSReferenceDataType(cols[x]))  Your implementation remains, however the handler is removed

 Thanks again!

[/edit]
 

Looks great. Glad I could contribute something to the project!

Kevin