Aniket
Oct 7, 2018
visibility 8676
star star star star star
(3 votes)

Max & Min element validation for Content Area or Link Collection

Reccently we had a business requirement for setting minimum & maximum limit for blocks in Content Areas. While we can educate the content authors to set the correct number of blocks in the content area it's always recommended to add validation within the CMS to avoid human errors.

Here's the code to to set the maximum number of blocks in the content area and Link Item Collection. 

/// <summary>
    /// Sets the maximum element count in a linkcollection, a content area - or any other type of collection.
    /// </summary>
    [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Property, AllowMultiple = false)]
    public class MaxElementsAttribute : ValidationAttribute, IMetadataAware
    {
        public int MaxCount { get; set; }

        public void OnMetadataCreated(ModelMetadata metadata)
        {
            //TODO: Use to disable editor drag and drop at a certain point.
        }

        protected override ValidationResult IsValid(object value, ValidationContext validationContext)
        {
            if (value == null)
            {
                return null;
            }
            if (value is LinkItemCollection)
            {
                if ((value as LinkItemCollection).Count > MaxCount)
                {
                    return new ValidationResult("This field exceeds the maximum limit of " + MaxCount + " items");
                }
            }
            else if (value is ContentArea)
            {
                if ((value as ContentArea).Count > MaxCount)
                {
                    return new ValidationResult("This field exceeds the maximum limit of " + MaxCount + " items");
                }
            }

            return null;
        }

        public MaxElementsAttribute(int MaxElementsInList)
        {
            this.MaxCount = MaxElementsInList;
        }
    }

On the Content Area field (or Link Item Collection) set the MaxElements attribute as shown below. 

[Display(
            Name = "Items",
            Description = "Items",
            GroupName = SystemTabNames.Content,
            Order = 30)]
        [MaxElements(25)]
        public virtual ContentArea Items { get; set; }

You can use the same logic for setting the minimum number of elements as well. 



Happy coding :)

Oct 07, 2018

Comments

Antti Alasvuo
Antti Alasvuo Oct 9, 2018 05:49 AM

Hi Aniket, first thanks for sharing this.

You should use the 'is' pattern matching in the code, see the docs. Now you first test is the value of some type (casting) and then if it was successful then the code casts again the object.

The XML comment says that it handles 'any other type of collection' but there is no implementation for collections in the code you have provided.

error Please login to comment.
Latest blogs
From AI Agents to AI Workflow with Opal

Introduction In the first article in this series , we talked about AI agents in Optimizely Opal and walked through the process of creating a...

Igor Safonov | Jul 23, 2026

Building Your First Optimizely Opal AI Agent: a Hands-On Walkthrough

Introduction There's a common assumption that building an AI agent is something only engineers or developers can do. It isn't. At the Optimizely AN...

Igor Safonov | Jul 23, 2026

Advanced Task Manager Gets a Big Update

One of the things I keep coming back to with Optimizely's content approval workflow is that it's solid at the individual level - you know a piece o...

Adnan Zameer | Jul 21, 2026 |

Parallel Development in Optimizely CMS SaaS: A Smarter Way to Register Components

📌 A note before you read: The approach described in this article is not a replacement for Optimizely’s recommended out-of-the-box component...

Vipin Banka | Jul 21, 2026