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I've migrated an MVC4 app to MVC6 (both .net 4.6.1) and am hitting numerous errors with the inbuilt model validation.

I have a number of complex models that are posted to controllers, and unless I disable validation on each model under configure services, they throw unecessary exceptions relating to properties that are irrelevant to validation, or just hangs after postback without reaching the controller action.

I have added the following line to MVC Configuration for all my affected classes, but I've now got a model that requires validation, so turning it off will cause numerous code changes.

options.ModelMetadataDetailsProviders.Add(new SuppressChildValidationMetadataProvider(typeof(TestModel)));

I tried this with a test app and can replicate the issue:

Test Controller:

public IActionResult Index()

 return View();


[HttpPost]
public IActionResult Index(TestModel model)

 return View();
 

Test Model (for example)

public class TestModel

 [Required]
 public string Name get; set; 

 [Required]
 [DataType(DataType.EmailAddress)]
 public string Email get; set; 

 public int NameLength
 
 get
 
 return Name.Length;
 
 

Without the validation attributes, the code works fine, but is not validated (obviously).

But when this model is posted, a NullReference exception is thrown by the NameLength property, even though no code references it, the property is read only, and the property it depends on is required. This validation happens before control is returned to the controller.

I've tried disabling this functionality in MvcOptions, but it doesn't have any effect:

options.MaxValidationDepth = null;
options.AllowValidatingTopLevelNodes = false;
options.AllowShortCircuitingValidationWhenNoValidatorsArePresent = true;

I don't know if there's a setting I'm missing, but I would expect the default functionality to ignore properties without validation attributes, or am I doing something wrong?.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Further to @Henks suggestion, I've added the ValidateNever attribute to the readonly properties of one class I was having problems with, which has worked, so the postback reaches the controller now, but its still calling the properties, it just seems to ignore the result:

[ValidateNever]
public Competition PrimaryCompetition

 get
 
 return GetCompetition(true);
 

This still triggers a null reference exception because it relies on another property that is [Required] but is not validated first.

I'm beginning to think this is a bug rather than an error on my part.