ASP.NET MVC EditorFor and DateTime default value

Question

I want to set default value for an EditorFor HTML helper but just the helper text is displayed in it. Why EditorFor does not let me to set its default value, please?

class Person {
   public int Id  { get; set; }
   public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; }
   ...
}

class PersonVM {
   public Person { get; set; }
   ...
}

public ActionResult Edit(int id)
{
   var vm = new PersonVM ();
   vm.Person = db.Persons.Where(x => x.Id == id).FirstOrDefault();
   ...
   return View(vm);
}

@model Project.Models.PersonVM 
@Html.EditorFor(model => model.Person.DateOfBirth , new { htmlAttributes = new { @class = "form-control" } })

Georg Patscheider · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-11 15:07:59Z

1

Set the default value by assigning a value to the model property.

Either in the Controller Action:

public ActionResult Edit(int id) {
   var vm = new PersonVM ();
   vm.Person = db.Persons.Where(x => x.Id == id).FirstOrDefault();
   if (vm.Person.DateOfBirth == default(DateTime)) {
       vm.Person.DateOfBirth = new DateTime(1900, 01, 01); // default value
   }
   // ...
   return View(vm);
}

Or in the ViewModel (make sure that you only map valid DateOfBirth from the DB to the ViewModel):

public class PersonVM {
   public PersonViewModel () {
       DateOfBirth = new DateTime(1900, 01, 01); // default value
   }

   public int Id  { get; set; }
   public DateTime DateOfBirth { get; set; }
   // ...
}

answered Jul 11, 2018 at 15:07

Georg Patscheider

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1 Comment

Sándor Hatvani Over a year ago

Thank you but the DataFormatString option of DisplayFormat attribute caused my problem. The input HTML element accepts only YYYY-MM-DD date format.

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