ASP.Net MVC3 conditional validation

I'm having some troubles with validation on my application. Let's say I've the following models:

    public class Company
    {
        public int id { get; set; }
        [Required]
        public String Name { get; set; }
        public String Location { get; set; }
        public List<Contacts> Contacts { get; set; }
    }

    public class Contact
    {
        public int id { get; set; }
        [Required]
        public String Name { get; set; }
        [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)]
        public String Email { get; set; }
        public String Telephone { get; set; }
        public String Mobile { get; set; }
    }

Now in my company create view I've two buttons, one to add contacts to the company, and another one to create the new company. I detected which button was used in my controller like this (both buttons are named "button"):

    [HttpPost]
    public ActionResult Create(String button, FormCollection collection)
    {
        if(button == "AddContact")
        {
            AddContact(collection);
        }
        else
        {
            CreateCompany(collection);
        }
    }

While it's being created the object that represents the company that it's being create is stored in the session (for example HttpContext.Session["company"] = company;)

Now the problem is that if, for example, I try to add a contact without first specifying the company name, i get a validation error because the company name is required, which shouldn't happen because the user might want to add the contacts before adding the company info. Or if I try to save the company, I also get a validation error, because usually when saving the "add contact" form is empty, which means that the contact name (which is required as well) was not specified.

What I want to know is that if it's possible to validate the contact properties only when the addContact button is used, and validate the company properties only when the c开发者_开发技巧reateCompany button is pressed.

For now i only need to do this serve-side, but if anyone has a solution to do this client-side as well i would appreciate the help.

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You could trigger your own validation on the individual objects using Validator.TryValidateObject(Object, ValidationContext, ICollection)

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You can provide conditional validation using the Entity Framework by overriding DbEntityValidationResult in the DbContext. When this validation occurs in the DbContext you can access other entities. When validating a contact you can check the company too. For example:

    protected override DbEntityValidationResult ValidateEntity(DbEntityEntry entityEntry, IDictionary<object, object> items)
    {
        var result = base.ValidateEntity(entityEntry, items);
        ValidateContact(result);
        return result;
    }

    private void ValidateContact(DbEntityValidationResult result)
    {
        var contact= result.Entry.Entity as Contact;
        if (contact!= null && contact.ContactId != 0)
        { 
            // Add validation code here, such as:
            if(!string.IsNullOrEmpty(contact.Company.Name){ 
                     result.ValidationErrors.Add(
                     new DbValidationError(
                       "Contact",
                       "Company name cannot be null or empty when validating contacts.")
                     );
            }
        }
    }

See Julia Lerman's Programming Entity Framework: DbContext http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Entity-Framework-Julia-Lerman/dp/1449312969 for more details.