Can Html Helpers be used outside of a Razor page

Question

I have a class 'IncomeStatement' that is used as a ViewModel. This class has a property that generates some fairly complicated html like this:

public MvcHtmlString HtmlPeriods { get; set; }
.... 
StringBuilder htmlPeriods = new StringBuilder(100);
htmlPeriods.AppendFormat(
"<td><a href='/Forecast/IndexPeriod?Period={1}'>{0}</a></td>",
    inc.NetSales, per.Period.PeriodID);
....
HtmlPeriods = MvcHtmlString.Create(htmlPeriods.ToString())

Then in the Razor file I use the HtmlPeriods property, which works fine:

<th></th>@Model.HtmlPeriods<td></td>

But what if I want to use the Html.ActionLink(...) in my class to create
nice Razorlike links, something like this:

string forecastLink = 
Html.ActionLink("Edit Forecast", "/Forecast/IndexEdit?PeriodID=2005Q1");

How would I do that?

Richard Dalton · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-01T14:05:29.397

4

You can use the HtmlHelper class to do this. I think you will want the GenerateLink method.

Example:

string link = HtmlHelper.GenerateLink(HttpContext.Current.Request.RequestContext, System.Web.Routing.RouteTable.Routes, "My link", "Default", "Index", "Home", null, null);

edited Aug 01 '11 at 14:05

answered Aug 01 '11 at 13:57

Richard Dalton

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May need to wrap this inside `MvcHtmlString.Create()` so it won't escape the html created. – toddmo Apr 11 '17 at 22:19

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 01 '11 at 14:23

0

In your situation it would be more correct to define HTML helpers instead of using properties and methods on your models. For example:

using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Mvc.Html;

public static class HtmlExtensions
{
    public static MvcHtmlString HtmlPeriods(this HtmlHelper<SomeViewModel> html)
    {
        // here you can use html.ActionLink in order
        // to generate the desired markup

        // you also have access to the view model here:
        SomeViewModel model = html.ViewData.Model;

        ... 
    }
}

and then in your view:

@Html.HtmlPeriods()

answered Aug 01 '11 at 14:23

Darin Dimitrov

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Darin - I agree that a helper would be better in most cases. However in this case I need to process sequential year records of a database table (vertical ordering) and present them in a horizontal fashion. My first approach was to have a 'foreach year' loop in a helper for each field in the table - not very eficient. – Dick de Reus Aug 03 '11 at 11:39
Now I do more html work in the ViewModel (agains the rules - I now) looping through the year records once, adding to StringBuilders to be used as html rows in the razor page. So one foreach instead of about 30. – Dick de Reus Aug 03 '11 at 11:46
@Dick de Reus, I am not sure I understand what you are taking about without showing some code. Every code could be refactored and optimized in HTML helpers. What you describe is better suited to a helper IMHO. – Darin Dimitrov Aug 03 '11 at 11:49

Can Html Helpers be used outside of a Razor page

2 Answers2