ASP.NET MVC 4, EF5, Unique property in model - best practice?

This link might help: https://github.com/fatihBulbul/UniqueAttribute

[Table("TestModels")]
public class TestModel
{

    [Key]
    public int Id { get; set; }

    [Display(Name = "Some", Description = "desc")]
    [Unique(ErrorMessage = "This already exist !!")]
    public string SomeThing { get; set; }
}

As crazy as it might sound the best practice nowadays is to not use built-in validation and instead use FluentValidation. Then the code will be very easy to read and super-maintainable since validation will be managed on separate class meaning less spaghetti code.

Pseudo-example of what you are trying to achieve.

[Validator(typeof(PlaceValidator))]
class Place
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public DateTime DateAdded { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Url { get; set; }
}

public class PlaceValidator : AbstractValidator<Place>
{
    public PlaceValidator()
    {
        RuleFor(x => x.Name).NotEmpty().WithMessage("Place Name is required").Length(0, 100);
        RuleFor(x => x.Url).Must(BeUniqueUrl).WithMessage("Url already exists");
    }

    private bool BeUniqueUrl(string url)
    {
        return new DataContext().Places.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Url == url) == null
    }
}

The only way is to update your migration once you generate it, assuming you are using them, so that it enforces a unique constraint on the column.

public override void Up() {
  // create table
  CreateTable("dbo.MyTable", ...;
  Sql("ALTER TABLE MyTable ADD CONSTRAINT U_MyUniqueColumn UNIQUE(MyUniqueColumn)");
}
public override void Down() {
  Sql("ALTER TABLE MyTable DROP CONSTRAINT U_MyUniqueColumn");
}

The hard bit, though, is enforcing the constraint at the code level before you get to the database. For that you might need a repository that contains the complete list of unique values and makes sure that new entities don't violate that through a factory method.

// Repository for illustration only
public class Repo {
  SortedList<string, Entity1> uniqueKey1 = ...; // assuming a unique string column 
  public Entity1 NewEntity1(string keyValue) {
    if (uniqueKey1.ContainsKey(keyValue) throw new ArgumentException ... ;
    return new Entity1 { MyUniqueKeyValue = keyValue };
  }
}

References:

• Repository - Fowler (the original source of Repository)
• Repostory - MSDN
• Tutorial: Repository in MVC (www.asp.net)
• Singleton in C# - SO

Footnote:

There are a lot of requests for [Unique] in code first, but it looks like it isn't even making version 6: http://entityframework.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Roadmap

You could try voting for it here: http://data.uservoice.com/forums/72025-entity-framework-feature-suggestions/suggestions/1050579-unique-constraint-i-e-candidate-key-support