MVC 5 Save Drafts While Ignoring Missing Required Fields

Question

I have searched for current solutions, but can't find a set of guidelines or examples as to how to achieve the following:

The original requirements involved models with required fields, so we included annotations to those fields. As usual, there is a last-minute change and we are being asked to allow the users to save drafts. These drafts must allow the user to save the forms without any of the required fields.

I would like to know what the best practices for this problem are.

Solutions I am considering, but I accept they might be a hack (and that's why I am asking the experts)

1. If the user clicks "Save as Draft" I can capture the fields that have information in another ActionResult and run basic validation on those fields. Since there is a chance that required fields are missing, I am thinking in storing the captured info in a temporal model (without any required annotations). If the user decides to edit such form, I can populate fields in the view with the temp. model until the user clicks on "Submit"
2. Another option is to remove all required annotations and run client-side validations... but am wondering on the amount of work required to do so.

Any thoughts are very much appreciated.

Answer 1

Just have 2 save methods. 1 which is called from the autosave and 1 that is used to submit the process. In the autosave method do not check if(ModelState.IsValid).

Whether you choose to save the incomplete objects to the same table or a different table is your choice. In a relational world I would likely use a separate table, in a non-relational world I would use a singular object collection.

This will allow you to keep the same set of original models. There is a very high cost to duplicating your models, there are certainly times that warrants pass by value/copy but make sure the cost of mapping is there. In this situtation I do not believe there is value in mapping, except perhaps at the persistence level if you need to map to a different object because of an ORM's constraints.

There is deep value in these partial forms. Recording this on the server will allow you to apply analytics to learn why your users abandon your processes. It also gives you the ability to follow up on users who leave incomplete forms such as sending a reminder (nag) email.