Custom ErrorMessage for model property is not displayed in production environment only

Question

I'm developping an ASP.NET MVC3 application.

I use DataAnnotations for some properties of my Models, with a custom error message if input is not correct.
However, it perfectly works when I run my app in localhost, but when I put it on my webserver (which is a shared web server), the error message is the one by default.

Here is an example :

[Required]
[Range(1d, 1000d, ErrorMessage = "My custom error message in French")]
public decimal Surface { get; set; }

When user type "abcde" in Surface field, I have the following error message :

The field Surface must be a number.

However, it should display the specified ErrorMessage. This works in localhost but not on my webserver.

I tried to force culture in web.config as follow :

<globalization culture="fr-FR" uiCulture="fr-FR"/>

But this doesn't work.

How can I force the application to display the ErrorMessage ?
I can't modify anything on the web server which hosts my app, it's a personal project hosted on a local website hosting.

Thanks for your help

Answer 1

As Stephen Muecke wrote "abcde" cannot be parsed into a decimal so it shows the generic error that "The field Surface must be a number".

To make the error message as you custom message you need to check if the input is a number/decimal and you can do it with a regular expression. Change your code as follows

[Required]
[RegularExpression(@"^\d+.\d{0,2}$",ErrorMessage = "custom error in your language")]// add this extra line
[Range(1d, 1000d, ErrorMessage = "My custom error message in French")]
public decimal Surface { get; set; }

You need to add the following line

[RegularExpression(@"^\d+.\d{0,2}$",ErrorMessage = "custom error in your language")]

which check via regular expression if it is a number, it will also check the decimal points if they are more than 2 like 2.002 then it will also give the error. You can look into regular expressions to build another expression which suits you the best.