MaxLength Attribute not generating client-side validation attributes

I have a curious problem with ASP.NET MVC3 client-side validation. I have the following class:

public class Instrument : BaseObject
{
    public int Id { get; set; }

    [Required(ErrorMessage = "Name is required.")]
    [MaxLength(40, ErrorMessage = "Name cannot be longer than 40 characters.")]
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

From my view:

<div class="editor-field">
    @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Name)
    @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Name)
</div>

And here's the generated HTML I get for the textbox for this field:

<input class="text-box single-line" data-val="true" data-val-required="Name is required." id="Name" name="Name" type="text" value="">

No sign of the MaxLengthAttribute, but everything else seems to be working.

Any ideas what's going wrong?

Try using the [StringLength] attribute:

[Required(ErrorMessage = "Name is required.")]
[StringLength(40, ErrorMessage = "Name cannot be longer than 40 characters.")]
public string Name { get; set; }

That's for validation purposes. If you want to set for example the maxlength attribute on the input you could write a custom data annotations metadata provider as shown in this post and customize the default templates.

I just used a snippet of jquery to solve this problem.

$("input[data-val-length-max]").each(function (index, element) {
   var length = parseInt($(this).attr("data-val-length-max"));
   $(this).prop("maxlength", length);
});

The selector finds all of the elements that have a data-val-length-max attribute set. This is the attribute that the StringLength validation attribute will set.

The each loop loops through these matches and will parse out the value for this attribute and assign it to the mxlength property that should have been set.

Just add this to you document ready function and you are good to go.

MaxLengthAttribute is working since MVC 5.1 update: change notes

In MVC 4 If you want maxlenght in input type text ? You can !

@Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.Item3.ADR_ZIP, new { @class = "gui-input ui-oblig", @maxlength = "5" })

Props to @Nick-Harrison for his answer:

$("input[data-val-length-max]").each(function (index, element) {
var length = parseInt($(this).attr("data-val-length-max"));
$(this).prop("maxlength", length);
});

I was wondering what the parseInt() is for there? I've simplified it to this with no problems...

$("input[data-val-length-max]").each(function (index, element) {
    element.setAttribute("maxlength", element.getAttribute("data-val-length-max"))
});

I would have commented on Nicks answer but don't have enough rep yet.

I had this same problem and I was able to solve it by implementing the IValidatableObject interface in my view model.

public class RegisterViewModel : IValidatableObject
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Error message for Minimum password
    /// </summary>
    public static string PasswordLengthErrorMessage => $"The password must be at least {PasswordMinimumLength} characters";

    /// <summary>
    /// Minimum acceptable password length
    /// </summary>
    public const int PasswordMinimumLength = 8;

    /// <summary>
    /// Gets or sets the password provided by the user.
    /// </summary>
    [Required]
    [DataType(DataType.Password)]
    [Display(Name = "Password")]
    public string Password { get; set; }

    /// <summary>
    /// Only need to validate the minimum length
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="validationContext">ValidationContext, ignored</param>
    /// <returns>List of validation errors</returns>
    public IEnumerable<ValidationResult> Validate(ValidationContext validationContext)
    {
        var errorList = new List<ValidationResult>();
        if ((Password?.Length ?? 0 ) < PasswordMinimumLength)
        {
            errorList.Add(new ValidationResult(PasswordLengthErrorMessage, new List<string>() {"Password"}));
        }
        return errorList;
    }
}

The markup in the Razor is then...

<div class="form-group">
    @Html.LabelFor(m => m.Password)
    @Html.PasswordFor(m => m.Password, new { @class = "form-control input-lg" }
    <div class="password-helper">Must contain: 8 characters, 1 upper-case, 1 lower-case
    </div>
    @Html.ValidationMessagesFor(m => m.Password, new { @class = "text-danger" })
</div>

This works really well. If I attempt to use [StringLength] instead then the rendered HTML is just not correct. The validation should render as:

<span class="text-danger field-validation-invalid field-validation-error" data-valmsg-for="Password" data-valmsg-replace="true"><span id="Password-error" class="">The Password should be a minimum of 8 characters long.</span></span>

With the StringLengthAttribute the rendered HTML shows as a ValidationSummary which is not correct. The funny thing is that when the validator fails the submit is still blocked!

I know I am very late to the party, but I finaly found out how we can register the MaxLengthAttribute.

First we need a validator:

public class MaxLengthClientValidator : DataAnnotationsModelValidator<MaxLengthAttribute>
{
    private readonly string _errorMessage;
    private readonly int _length;


    public MaxLengthClientValidator(ModelMetadata metadata, ControllerContext context, MaxLengthAttribute attribute)
    : base(metadata, context, attribute)
    {
        _errorMessage = attribute.FormatErrorMessage(metadata.DisplayName);
        _length = attribute.Length;
    }

    public override IEnumerable<ModelClientValidationRule> GetClientValidationRules()
    {
        var rule = new ModelClientValidationRule
        {
            ErrorMessage = _errorMessage,
            ValidationType = "length"
        };

        rule.ValidationParameters["max"] = _length;
        yield return rule;
    }
}

Nothing realy special. In the constructor we save some values from the attribute. In the GetClientValidationRules we set a rule. ValidationType = "length" is mapped to data-val-length by the framework. rule.ValidationParameters["max"] is for the data-val-length-max attribute.

Now since you have a validator, you only need to register it in global.asax:

protected void Application_Start()
{
    //...
    
    //Register Validator
    DataAnnotationsModelValidatorProvider.RegisterAdapter(typeof(MaxLengthAttribute), typeof(MaxLengthClientValidator));
}

Et voila, it just works.

StringLength works great, i used it this way:

[StringLength(25,MinimumLength=1,ErrorMessage="Sorry only 25 characters allowed for 
              ProductName")]
public string ProductName { get; set; }

or Just Use RegularExpression without StringLength:

[RegularExpression(@"^[a-zA-Z0-9'@&#.\s]{1,25}$", ErrorMessage = "Reg Says Sorry only 25 
                   characters allowed for ProductName")]    
public string ProductName { get; set; }

but for me above methods gave error in display view, cause i had already ProductName field in database which had more than 25 characters

so finally i came across this and this post and tried to validate without model like this:

 <div class="editor-field">
 @Html.TextBoxFor(model => model.ProductName, new
 {
 @class = "form-control",
 data_val = "true",
 data_val_length = "Sorry only 25 characters allowed for ProductName",
 data_val_length_max = "25",
 data_val_length_min = "1"
 })
 <span class="validation"> @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.ProductName)</span>
 </div>

this solved my issue, you can also do validation manually using jquery or using ModelState.AddModelError

hope helps someone.

I tried this for all the inputs in my html document(textarea,inputs,etc) that had the data-val-length-max property and it works correctly.

$(document).ready(function () {
    $(":input[data-val-length-max]").each(function (index, element) {
        var length = parseInt($(this).attr("data-val-length-max"));
        $(this).prop("maxlength", length);
    });
});

This can replace the MaxLength and the MinLength

[StringLength(40, MinimumLength = 10 , ErrorMessage = "Name cannot be longer than 40 characters and less than 10")]

<input class="text-box single-line" data-val="true" data-val-required="Name is required." 
    id="Name1" name="Name" type="text" value="">

$('#Name1').keypress(function () {
    if (this.value.length >= 5) return false;
});