My ModelState remains valid in Controller test even when it's not.

Hi everyone,

I wrote a test that asserts that ModelState.IsValid is false but the test keeps failing. On closer examination, I find that ModelState.IfValid is always returning true for my controller tests. I had used Data annotations to mark up the model with required attributes.

Am I missing anything?

Re: My ModelState remains valid in Controller test even when it's not.

What are you doing to invalidate your model state? Why do you expect it to return false?

Re: My ModelState remains valid in Controller test even when it's not.

For instance, I would set up a model and exclude a required parameter. Then, i would pass that new model onto the new Controller.Action(model) method.

my action method signature uses

public ActionResult ActionMethod(Model model){


           if(ModelState.IsValid){
                // Do the right thing
                return RedirectToAction("Index");
           }
          

           return View();
  

}

Re: My ModelState remains valid in Controller test even when it's not.

Simply executing a method during a unit test does just that - executes a method, and no more. The MVC pipeline doesn't run, so binding and validation don't run.

If you want to unit test your action's behavior for when ModelState is invalid, you need to manually make ModelState invalid. You can use controller.ModelState.AddModelError("", "dummy error message") from within your unit test to force ModelState to be invalid.

Re: My ModelState remains valid in Controller test even when it's not.

Many thanks.

Re: My ModelState remains valid in Controller test even when it's not.

Did you solved the problem?

What is your framework version ? 3.5 ? 4 ?

I had the same problem. I updated from framework 3.5 to 4 and works like a charm