Handle ModelState Validation in ASP.NET Web API

Maybe not what you were looking for, but perhaps nice for someone to know:

If you are using .net Web Api 2 you could just do the following:

if (!ModelState.IsValid)
     return BadRequest();

Depending on the model errors, you get this result:

{
   Message: "The request is invalid."
   ModelState: {
       model.PropertyA: [
            "The PropertyA field is required."
       ],
       model.PropertyB: [
             "The PropertyB field is required."
       ]
   }
}

For separation of concern, I would suggest you use action filter for model validation, so you don't need to care much how to do validation in your api controller:

using System.Net;
using System.Net.Http;
using System.Web.Http.Controllers;
using System.Web.Http.Filters;

namespace System.Web.Http.Filters
{
    public class ValidationActionFilter : ActionFilterAttribute
    {
        public override void OnActionExecuting(HttpActionContext actionContext)
        {
            var modelState = actionContext.ModelState;

            if (!modelState.IsValid)
                actionContext.Response = actionContext.Request
                     .CreateErrorResponse(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, modelState);
        }
    }
}