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In the previous video we saw how
under-posting was breaking our validation,

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let's explore how we
can resolve this issue.

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Let's take a look at
out Entry model class.

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Adding required attributes to the Date,
ActivityId, Duration,

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and Intensity properties,
unfortunately won't make a difference.

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The Required attribute ensures
that a property has a value, but

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the default values for these property
data types are in fact valid values.

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In order for the required attribute
to have the desired effect,

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we need to change these properties to
their corresponding nullable types.

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But this classes' primary concern is
to define the entry type in our EF

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unity data model.

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In this particular situation it doesn't
feel right to change this class

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in order to solve a problem with our API.

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Also, if this class is being
used across multiple projects,

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changing a property's data type could
break code throughout our solution.

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The workaround that I'm going to employ,
is to create a DTO,

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a Data Transfer Object.

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And update our entries controller post and

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put methods to bind to the DTO
instead of the entry model.

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Having an entry DTO class will give us
a way to define the properties using

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nullable types, all without
changing the entry model class.

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Let's start by editing a folder for
our DTO class to live in.

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Right click on
the Treehouse.FitnessFrog.Spa project and

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select Add > NewFolder,
let's name the folder Dto.

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Now let's add a class to our new folder.

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I'll name the class EntryDto.

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Now we need to add our properties,
which for

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the most part will be one to one of
the properties on the entry model class.

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Public int Id { get; set;}.

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Public DateTime?

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Date { get; set; }.

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public int?

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ActivityId { get; set; }.

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Public decimal?

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Duration { get; set; }.

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Public Entry, and let's add a using
directive to the TreehouseFitnessFrog

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shared model's namespace, and
this will be of type IntensityLevel,

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which is the enumeration
defined in the entry model.

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Add a question mark so
it's nullable as well, and

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the name of the property is Intensity.

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Then public bool, Exclude { get; set; }.

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And lastly,
public string Notes { get; set; }..

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Okay, now that we have our properties,
we can add our data annotation attributes.

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The Date, ActivityId, Duration and

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Intensity properties all
need required attributes.

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And adding using directive for the system
component model data annotation namespace.

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Okay, so that was for the Date property,

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now we need to add a required attribute
for ActivityId, Duration, and Intensity.

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I'm gonna add some extra white space,
just to make this easier to read.

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There, that looks better.

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Let's review the Entry Model class to see
if there's anything we might have missed.

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That's just a display attribute,
we can ignore that.

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The Notes property is decorated with
a max length data annotation attribute.

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This limits the length of the string for

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the Notes property to no
more than 200 characters.

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It'd be good for

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this constraint to be enforced as
a validation rule within our IAPI.

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So, let's copy and paste this attribute to
our DTO class property with the same name.

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All right,
now let's update the Entry's controller.

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Scroll down to the Post action method.

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And let's the method's parameter
to be our DTO's type, so EntryDto.

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Looks like we need to add
a using directive for

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our name space
Teehouse.FitnessFrog.Spa.Dto.

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There we go.

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Now web API will bind to our
EntryDto instead of the entry model.

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That was easy enough to do, but

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that broke the call to
the entriesRepository Add method.

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Which expects an instance
of the Entry model class.

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To resolve this issue, we need a method
to convert our EntryDto class instance

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to an Entry model class instance.

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To do this, let's add a to
model method to our DTO class.

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Public, and for the return type
we want this to be of type Entry,

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our model class, and
let's name the method ToModel().

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We want to return a new instance
of the Entry model class.

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Then let's map each of our DTO
properties to a model property.

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So Id = Id, Date = Date, but

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since this is a nullable
date time property,

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we need to actually set it
to the Date.Value property.

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Then ActivityId = ActivityId,
and again the same thing,

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it's a nullable integer so
we want the Value property.

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Duration = Duration.Value,

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Intensity, Intensity.Value.

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And then exclude this time, just Exclude,

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because it's not a nullable type,
and Notes = Notes.

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Then back in our Entry controller,
let's make a call to our new method

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right before to
the _entriesRepository.Add method.

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Var, and let's use the variable
name entryModel = entry.ToModel.

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Now we can pass the entryModel
variable into the Add method.

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After the entry has been
added to the database,

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EF will set the model's ID property with
a value that assigned by the database.

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We'll want to update our DTO's ID
property with that value.

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So our call to the created method
will have the new resource's id.

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So entry.id = entryModel.id.

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Before we test our changes let's
also update the Put method.

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To start, let's change our return
type from void to IHttpActionResult.

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And instead of binding to
the Entry model class,

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we wanna bind to our EntryDto class.

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Then let's add an if
statement to check to see if

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the ModelState.IsValid property is false.

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And if it is false we want to
return a call to BadRequest,

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parsing in our ModelState.

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And just like with
the repositories add method,

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the update method expects an instance
of the Entry model class.

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So we need to call the ToModel
method on our DTO object And

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then lastly since we changed our void
return type to IHttpActionResult,

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we now need to explicitly return
the no content status code.

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We can do that by returning
a call to the StatusCode method.

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Passing in the System.Net.HttpStatusCode
in numeration value of NoContent.

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Next step let's test our changes.