Automatically trim html controls in a asp.net mvc project

I have noticed over the years that users being users sometimes posts forms on a website that has leading or trailing spaces into the input controls. This I find is especially a problem when the user has copied and pasted an email/website address from a internet page or email. On the surface this might be OK but for me especially for email and website addresses when I display this back in a href then sometimes we get:-
- 'mailto:// email@email.com ' or
- href=' http://www.wildesoft.net '

So what I need to remember is to either a) trim before I send to the database or b) trim after I retrieve from the database. I for one prefer option one, better to keep the database correct rather than fixing output in the UI. But is there a way that we can do this for every html control that is posted? With asp.net MVC we can override the default model binder which performs a trim before the value gets to the action method on a controller.

All you need to do is to add the following class to your mvc project:-

public class TrimModelBinder : DefaultModelBinder
{
  protected override void SetProperty(
      ControllerContext controllerContext,
      ModelBindingContext bindingContext,
      PropertyDescriptor propertyDescriptor, object value)
  {
    if (propertyDescriptor.PropertyType == typeof(string))
    {
      var val = (string)value;
      if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(val))
        val = stringValue.Trim();

      value = val;
    }

    base.SetProperty(controllerContext, bindingContext, 
        propertyDescriptor, value);
  }
}

Then in your application start up method:-

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

Now when a user keys in a leading or trailing space into any input control then the TrimModel binder kicks in and automatically removes it for you.

The only instance where this may be a problem is when a user has a leading or trailing space on their password.