ValidationMessage is showing on initial GET method

Question

I am working on an MVC 4 project that is constantly showing the ValidationMessage even on a simple GET method that does no validation or model binding of complex types:

//location/{locationId}/announcement
[HttpGet]
public ActionResult LocationMakeAnnouncement(int locationId)
{
    var pageViewModel = this.BuildLocationMakeAnnouncementViewModel(locationId);
    return View(pageViewModel);
}

The BuildLocationMakeAnnouncementViewModel only builds up the ViewModel and doesn't touch the ModelState.

Then on the view I have:

<span class="errorArea">@Html.ValidationMessage("ProductText", " ", new { @class = "inputErrorIcon" })</span>

Which emits:

<span class="errorArea"><span class="field-validation-valid inputErrorIcon" data-valmsg-for="ProductText" data-valmsg-replace="false"> </span></span>

Outputting the ModelState shows that it does not have any errors

@ViewData.ModelState.Values.Any(x => x.Errors.Count >= 1)

Why would ValidatioMessage output the when there are no errors?

ANY suggestions?

Answer 1

Turns out this is the behavior if you enable ClientValidationEnabled and UnobtrusiveJavaScriptEnabled.

So setting them to false fixed my problem:

<add key="ClientValidationEnabled" value="false" />
<add key="UnobtrusiveJavaScriptEnabled" value="false" />