dynamically remove an element's required attribute in ASP MVC?

Question

Is there a way, in an ASP MVC project using unobtrusive validation, to dynamically remove the Required attribute from an element?

The element is decorated with a Required annotation in the view model. I thought I could remove this by removing the html attribute, "data-val-required," with JQuery but client validation still treats the element as required. Is it impossible to manipulate the element's validation by manipulating the unobtrusive validation attributes?

This is what I tried, but it didn't work. I wanted to remove the required attribute if a check box was unchecked.

$("#chkTempHire").click(function () {

    var checked = $(this).attr("checked");
    var attr = $("#txtTempHireEndDate").attr("data-val-required");
    var hasAttr = false;

    if (typeof attr !== typeof undefined && attr !== false)
        hasAttr = true;

    if (!checked && hasAttr)
        $("#txtTempHireEndDate").removeAttr("data-val-required");
});

Am I missing something, or is it just not possible?

Thank you!

Answer 1

You can use the .rules() method built into jQuery, you don't need to manually remove attributes.

To remove:

$("#txtTempHireEndDate").rules("remove", "required")

To add:

$("#txtTempHireEndDate").rules("add", "required")