Thread.Culture not being respected for model-binding in MVC2

Question

To allow for culture-specific values to be bound correctly I have this ModelBinder:

public class CultureAwareModelBinder : DefaultModelBinder {

    public override object BindModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext) {

        BaseController controller = (BaseController)controllerContext.Controller;

        CultureInfo culture  = controller.Settings.Culture;
        CultureInfo language = controller.Settings.Language;

        Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture   = culture;
        Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = language;

        return base.BindModel(controllerContext, bindingContext);
    }
}

(BaseController.Settings is a property that exposes the correct CultureInfo for the current application's user).

I set it up like so

protected void Application_Start() {
    ModelBinders.Binders.DefaultBinder = new CultureAwareModelBinder();
}

When I debug and step-through my code, the Thread.Culture is being set correctly, however my model keeps getting the wrong values.

This is my model:

public class EventModel {

    public DateTime Start { get; set; }
    public DateTime End { get; set; }
}

When I specify "10/6/2013" for either field in my web-browser and hit submit, and when the culture is "en-GB" (and I checked the thread's DateTimeFormat is indeed set to dd/MM/yyyy), MVC receives it as the 6th October 2013, not the 10th June 2013.

I don't know why this is happening, and unfortunately I can't source-step into the actual model-binding. Why is it not respecting the thread culture?

Answer 1

It's way too late to set the current culture in the model binder. This should be done much earlier in the execution pipeline. For example in the Application_BeginRequest event in your Global.asax.

Answer 2

I faced the same issue. My solution was to use the DefaultModelBinder however instead of using an ActionFilter to set the desired culture I used a IAuthorizationFilter which has the same effect, however is executed before model binding unlike the 'ActionFilter' which is executed after model binding.

I appreciate that it is slightly inelegant/unorthodox use of the IAuthorizationFilter however it did the trick.