Custom EditorTemplate not being used in MVC4 for DataType.Date

Question

I'm upgrading an MVC3 application to MVC4 using the instructions from Microsoft. Everything went fairly smoothly - except a few of my date model properties are now rendering differently. For example, one of these properties is defined in the viewmodel like this:

[Required(ErrorMessage = "Required")]
[DataType(DataType.Date)]
[RegularExpression(@"([1-9]|0[1-9]|1[012])...",
    ErrorMessage = "Format is mm/dd/yyyy")]
[FormatHint("mm/dd/yyyy")]
[InputSize("small")]
public string Date { get; set; }

Before upgrading to MVC4, this would be rendered via calling @Html.EditorFor(m => m.Date) which would use a custom EditorTemplate - the String.cshtml template (since it's a string!). I have some custom data annotations that formats the html so it utilizes a field layout, jQueryUI, and twitter Bootstrap on the client side. The validation is done via jquery validation unobtrusive. Anyhow, this is how it previously rendered:

Now that I'm using MVC4, the String.cshtml editor template is not being called for this property any longer. It renders like this (in Chrome using the HTML5 editor stuff, I assume):

The input element looks pretty much the same - all the jQuery validation bits are in there - the only difference seems to be the type attribute is now type="date", where before it was type="text".

I'd like to continue using the String.cshtml EditorTemplate for this datatype. I'm thinking there might be a data annotation that I can put on the ViewModel property to provide a TemplateHint for @Html.EditorFor(...). If not this, I'd like to know the custom EditorTemplate that I can write to hijack MVC4's formatting (I've already tried DateTime.cshtml - it's not being called either). If not either of those, then I'm open to suggestions on how to get my property rendering like it used to.

Answer 1

In MVC4, the used template is determinated from :

1. The UIHintAttribute if any
2. The DataTypeAttribute if any
3. The type of the property

In MVC3, the DataTypeAttribute was not used.

Your property has a

[DataType(DataType.Date)]

so the template Date.cshtml is used. If it does not exists, default rendering is executed.

You have two options to resolve your problem :

1. Add a UIHint("String") on your property, or
2. Rename your editor template from String.cshtml to Date.cshtml