How can dynamic breadcrumbs be achieved with ASP.net MVC?

Question

Sitemap's are definitely one way to go... alternatively, you can write one yourself! (of course as long as standard MVC rules are followed)... I just wrote one, I figured I would share here.

@Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home")
@if(ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() != "Home") {
    @:> @Html.ActionLink(ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString(), "Index", ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString()) 
}
@if(ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString() != "Index"){
    @:> @Html.ActionLink(ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString(), ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString(), ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString()) 
}

Hopefully someone will find this helpful, this is exactly what I was looking for when I searched SO for MVC breadcrumbs.

ASP.NET 5 (aka ASP.NET Core), MVC Core Solution

In ASP.NET Core, things are further optimized as we don't need to stringify the markup in the extension method.

In ~/Extesions/HtmlExtensions.cs:

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Html;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Rendering;

namespace YourProjectNamespace.Extensions
{
    public static class HtmlExtensions
    {
        private static readonly HtmlContentBuilder _emptyBuilder = new HtmlContentBuilder();

        public static IHtmlContent BuildBreadcrumbNavigation(this IHtmlHelper helper)
        {
            if (helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() == "Home" ||
                helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() == "Account")
            {
                return _emptyBuilder;
            }

            string controllerName = helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString();
            string actionName = helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString();

            var breadcrumb = new HtmlContentBuilder()
                                .AppendHtml("<ol class='breadcrumb'><li>")
                                .AppendHtml(helper.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home"))
                                .AppendHtml("</li><li>")
                                .AppendHtml(helper.ActionLink(controllerName.Titleize(),
                                                          "Index", controllerName))
                                .AppendHtml("</li>");


            if (helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString() != "Index")
            {
                breadcrumb.AppendHtml("<li>")
                          .AppendHtml(helper.ActionLink(actionName.Titleize(), actionName, controllerName))
                          .AppendHtml("</li>");
            }

            return breadcrumb.AppendHtml("</ol>");
        }
    }
}

~/Extensions/StringExtensions.cs remains the same as below (scroll down to see the MVC5 version).

In razor view, we don't need Html.Raw, as Razor takes care of escaping when dealing with IHtmlContent:

....
....
<div class="container body-content">

    <!-- #region Breadcrumb -->
    @Html.BuildBreadcrumbNavigation()
    <!-- #endregion -->

    @RenderBody()
    <hr />
...
...

ASP.NET 4, MVC 5 Solution

=== ORIGINAL / OLD ANSWER BELOW ===

(Expanding on Sean Haddy's answer above)

If you want to make it extension-driven (keeping Views clean), you can do something like:

In ~/Extesions/HtmlExtensions.cs:

(compatible with MVC5 / bootstrap)

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

namespace YourProjectNamespace.Extensions
{
    public static class HtmlExtensions
    {
        public static string BuildBreadcrumbNavigation(this HtmlHelper helper)
        {
            // optional condition: I didn't wanted it to show on home and account controller
            if (helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() == "Home" ||
                helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString() == "Account")
            {
                return string.Empty;
            }

            StringBuilder breadcrumb = new StringBuilder("<ol class='breadcrumb'><li>").Append(helper.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home").ToHtmlString()).Append("</li>");


            breadcrumb.Append("<li>");
            breadcrumb.Append(helper.ActionLink(helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString().Titleize(),
                                               "Index",
                                               helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString()));
            breadcrumb.Append("</li>");

            if (helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString() != "Index")
            {
                breadcrumb.Append("<li>");
                breadcrumb.Append(helper.ActionLink(helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString().Titleize(),
                                                    helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"].ToString(),
                                                    helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"].ToString()));
                breadcrumb.Append("</li>");
            }

            return breadcrumb.Append("</ol>").ToString();
        }
    }
}

In ~/Extensions/StringExtensions.cs:

using System.Globalization;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

namespace YourProjectNamespace.Extensions
{
    public static class StringExtensions
    {
        public static string Titleize(this string text)
        {
            return CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(text).ToSentenceCase();
        }

        public static string ToSentenceCase(this string str)
        {
            return Regex.Replace(str, "[a-z][A-Z]", m => m.Value[0] + " " + char.ToLower(m.Value[1]));
        }
    }
}

Then use it like (in _Layout.cshtml for example):

....
....
<div class="container body-content">

    <!-- #region Breadcrumb -->
    @Html.Raw(Html.BuildBreadcrumbNavigation())
    <!-- #endregion -->

    @RenderBody()
    <hr />
...
...

There is a tool to do this on codeplex: http://mvcsitemap.codeplex.com/ [project moved to github]

Edit:

There is a way to derive a SiteMapProvider from a database: http://www.asp.net/Learn/data-access/tutorial-62-cs.aspx

You might be able to modify the mvcsitemap tool to use that to get what you want.

I built this nuget package to solve this problem for myself:

https://www.nuget.org/packages/MvcBreadCrumbs/

You can contribute here if you have ideas for it:

https://github.com/thelarz/MvcBreadCrumbs

For those using ASP.NET Core 2.0 and looking for a more decoupled approach than vulcan's HtmlHelper, I recommend having a look at using a partial view with dependency injection.

Below is a simple implementation which can easily be molded to suit your needs.

The breadcrumb service (./Services/BreadcrumbService.cs):

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Rendering;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ViewFeatures;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace YourNamespace.YourProject
{  
  public class BreadcrumbService : IViewContextAware
  {
    IList<Breadcrumb> breadcrumbs;

    public void Contextualize(ViewContext viewContext)
    {
      breadcrumbs = new List<Breadcrumb>();

      string area = $"{viewContext.RouteData.Values["area"]}";
      string controller = $"{viewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"]}";
      string action = $"{viewContext.RouteData.Values["action"]}";
      object id = viewContext.RouteData.Values["id"];
      string title = $"{viewContext.ViewData["Title"]}";   

      breadcrumbs.Add(new Breadcrumb(area, controller, action, title, id));

      if(!string.Equals(action, "index", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
      {
        breadcrumbs.Insert(0, new Breadcrumb(area, controller, "index", title));
      }
    }

    public IList<Breadcrumb> GetBreadcrumbs()
    {
      return breadcrumbs;
    }
  }

  public class Breadcrumb
  {
    public Breadcrumb(string area, string controller, string action, string title, object id) : this(area, controller, action, title)
    {
      Id = id;
    }

    public Breadcrumb(string area, string controller, string action, string title)
    {
      Area = area;
      Controller = controller;
      Action = action;

      if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(title))
      {
         Title = Regex.Replace(CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase(string.Equals(action, "Index", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) ? controller : action), "[a-z][A-Z]", m => m.Value[0] + " " + char.ToLower(m.Value[1]));
      }
      else
      {
         Title = title;
      } 
    }

    public string Area { get; set; }
    public string Controller { get; set; }
    public string Action { get; set; }
    public object Id { get; set; }
    public string Title { get; set; }
  }
}

Register the service in startup.cs after AddMvc():

public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
{
    services.AddMvc();

    services.AddTransient<BreadcrumbService>(); 

Create a partial to render the breadcrumbs (~/Views/Shared/Breadcrumbs.cshtml):

@using YourNamespace.YourProject.Services
@inject BreadcrumbService BreadcrumbService

@foreach(var breadcrumb in BreadcrumbService.GetBreadcrumbs())
{
    <a asp-area="@breadcrumb.Area" asp-controller="@breadcrumb.Controller" asp-action="@breadcrumb.Action" asp-route-id="@breadcrumb.Id">@breadcrumb.Title</a>
}

At this point, to render the breadcrumbs simply call Html.Partial("Breadcrumbs") or Html.PartialAsync("Breadcrumbs").