All you'd need to do is to have another partial view for strings called TextboxForm.cshtml.

Joel Abrahamsson's blog post about it should give you some ideas.

I actually do have a partial view called TextBoxForm that already exists.  I have tried to specify the model as string, and although visually it looks fine on the page, it isn't rendinering out the necessary data- attributes in the html that come from the data annotations.  When I pull the exact same code out of the partial view and into the main view, it works just fine.

Ah sorry I missed that part. That the first example says Last name and the first says first name is not relevant for this example?

When you say that you add these on the viewmodel, are you using your ContentData as viewmodel or is the viewmodel something separate?
If you're using something separate and that FirstName is not representing a Property on your Content, I would suggest that you don't use PropertyFor, as it is supposed to be used for rendering Content Properties.

With basic MVC you can reuse views into separate .cshtml files and render them using @Html.Partial or @Html.RenderPartial.

The first name / last name was just a mistake on my part in copying the fields, in essence its the same thing.  

In regards to the view model, I am not using my content data as a view model, as it is a form I am trying to post back to the controller and there is no content in it.  I have a base viewmodel class that I pass in the current page to it which is used to access any of the actual CMS features.  The view model itself is used as a mechanism of posting data back to the server, so in essence these fields are not content properties.  I will try and use partial views to see if it can accomplish what I am looking to do.  Thanks for the suggestion.

What is content of your "TextboxForm.cshtml" file?

The file looks basically like the following.

<div class="form-group">
@Html.LabelFor(m => Model)
@Html.TextboxFor(m => Model)
@Html.ValidationMessage(m => Model)
</div>

Just curious - what if you use Html.EditorFor(...) instead of Html.PropertyFor(...) ?

Valdis as he's trying to render something that isn't content properties I don't think it would be an expected behavior that PropertyFor or editfor would work

PorpertyFor is looking for Display templates, EditorFor is looking for editor templates. I speculate that unobtrusive validation shows up if you request for templates within editor context. Could be wrong..

I ended up giving up on this way of thinking.  Getting the attributes working with the display templates didn't seem to work so I dropped the display template and placed the code back into the views directly.  It may be better in the long wrong as it allows for writing out each field exactly the way you want it, but in the case of a similar looking form it just beomes redundant to have the same code all over the place.

   In the custom UIHint display template, make sure to use the correct HTML helpers to generate the input field, such as @Html.TextBoxFor or @Html.EditorFor.      These helpers should automatically generate the necessary data attributes for unobtrusive JavaScript validation based on the data annotations applied to the property.

  @Html.TextBoxFor(model => model, new { data_val = "true", data_val_required = "The field is required." })

Muhammed Riza

Subul - Impact Outsourcing Agency