ASP.NET MVC - Current Page highlighting in navigation

Question

I'm wondering how is it possible to add a CSS Class to the current page in your navigation when using ASP.NET MVC 3? Here is my navigation in my _Layout.cshtml file:

<p>@Html.ActionLink("Product Search", "Index", new { controller = "Home" }, new { @class = "current" })
                | @Html.ActionLink("Orders", "Index", new { controller = "Orders" }) 
                | @Html.ActionLink("My Account", "MyAccount", new { controller = "Account" })
                | @Html.ActionLink("Logout", "LogOff", new { controller = "Account" })</p>

As you can see I have 4 links in my navigation with the first one having the CSS class "current" applied to it, I'd like to be able to add/remove this class to the different links in my navigation depending on which page the user is at. Is this possible?

Cheers

Answer 1

You can do this

@{ 
   var currentController = ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"] as string ?? "Home";
   var currentAction = ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"] as string ?? "Index";
   var currentPage = (currentController + "-" + currentAction ).ToLower();
}

@Html.ActionLink("Product Search", "Index", "Home", null,
                 new { @class = currentPage == "home-index" ? "current" : "" })
@Html.ActionLink("MyAccount", "MyAccount", "Account", null,
                  new { @class = currentPage == "account-myaccount" ? "current" : "" })

Answer 2

I would recommend using an extension method for this. Something like:

public static HtmlString NavigationLink(
    this HtmlHelper html,
    string linkText,
    string actionName,
    string controllerName)
{
    string contextAction = (string)html.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"];
    string contextController = (string)html.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"];

    bool isCurrent =
        string.Equals(contextAction, actionName, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase) &&
        string.Equals(contextController, controllerName, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase);

    return html.ActionLink(
        linkText,
        actionName,
        controllerName,
        routeValues: null,
        htmlAttributes: isCurrent ? new { @class = "current" } : null);
}

Then you can use it in your View by including the namespace of your extension and just calling your method:

@using MyExtensionNamespace;

...

  @Html.NavigationLink("Product Search", "Index", "Home")
| @Html.NavigationLink("Orders", "Index", "Orders") 
| @Html.NavigationLink("My Account", "MyAccount", "Account")
| @Html.NavigationLink("Logout", "LogOff", "Account")

This has the benefit of keeping your razor a little cleaner and is easily reusable in other views.

Answer 3

@{
   var controller = ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString();
   var action = ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString();
   var isActiveController = new Func<string, string, string, string, string>((ctrl, act, activeStyle, inactiveStyle) => controller == ctrl && action == act ? activeStyle : inactiveStyle);
 }

Then in your class attribute in your HTML you can do:

class="@isActiveController("controlername","action","activecssstyleclass","inactiveccsstyle")"

Just an other way of @dknaack his answer.. bit more generic and less functionality to repeat in your code.

Answer 4

In my case,assume I have a Home page and a menu.

Add a ViewBag.Active as a placeholder in Home page like this:

@{
   ViewBag.Title = "Home";
   ViewBag.Active = "Home";
}

Then place it to your li class as a condition to active it or not:

 <li class="@(ViewBag.Active=="Home"? "active" : "")">
      <a href="@Url.Action("Index", "Home")"><span>@ViewBag.Title</span></a>
 </li>

Answer 5

I used this tutorial to get this done, it's a lot simpler to understand and takes 2 minutes Hightlight Active menu item