How to stop auto-population in helper EditorFor?

Question

ViewModel:

[Required]
public int Hours { get; set; }

Razor:

@Html.EditorFor(m => m.Hours)

Output:

<input type="text" value="0" name="Hours" id="Hours" 
 data-val-required="The field is required." 
 data-val-number="The field must be a number."
 data-val="true" class="text-box single-line valid">

What gives, why is the value being automatically populated with 0. It is pretty much bypassing validation in that the user can submit this without actually entering anything.

Answer 1

Your property's type is int which is value type with the default value of 0.

If you want the Reuired attribute properly work make Hours nullable:

[Required]
public int? Hours { get; set; }