How to exclude a field from @Html.EditForModel() but have it show using Html.DisplayForModel()

Question

I am reading up on ASP.NET MVC and all of it's fun uses and I just found out about DataTemplates.

In my hurry to test this thing out, I converted one of my simpler models over to using @Html.DisplayForModel() and @Html.EditForModel() and it worked like a lucky charm that it is :)

One thing that I immediately found out though was that I could not easily define a field to show up on display views but not be present at all for editing...

Answer 1

You can make use of IMetadataAware interface an create attribute which will set ShowForEdit and ShowForDislay in Metadata:

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Property, AllowMultiple = false, Inherited = true)]
public class TemplatesVisibilityAttribute : Attribute, IMetadataAware
{
    public bool ShowForDisplay { get; set; }

    public bool ShowForEdit { get; set; }

    public TemplatesVisibilityAttribut()
    {
        this.ShowForDisplay = true;
        this.ShowForEdit = true;
    }

    public void OnMetadataCreated(ModelMetadata metadata)
    {
        if (metadata == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("metadata");
        }

        metadata.ShowForDisplay = this.ShowForDisplay;
        metadata.ShowForEdit = this.ShowForEdit;
    }

}

Then you can attach it to your property like this:

public class TemplateViewModel
{
  [TemplatesVisibility(ShowForEdit = false)]
  public string ShowForDisplayProperty { get; set; }

  public string ShowAlwaysProperty { get; set; }
}

And this is all you need.