How do I access HtmlHelper methods from within MY OWN HtmlHelper?

Question

I am writing my own HtmlHelper extenstion for ASP.NET MVC:

public static string CreateDialogLink (this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, string linkText, 
                                      string contentPath)
        {
            // fix up content path if the user supplied a path beginning with '~'
            contentPath = Url.Content(contentPath);  // doesn't work (see below for why)

            // create the link and return it
            // .....
        };

Where I am having trouble is tryin to access UrlHelper from within my HtmlHelper's definition. The problem is that the way you normally access HtmlHelper (via Html.MethodName(...) ) is via a property on the View. This isn't available to me obviously from with my own extension class.

This is the actual MVC source code for ViewMasterPage (as of Beta) - which defines Html and Url.

public class ViewMasterPage : MasterPage
    {
        public ViewMasterPage();

        public AjaxHelper Ajax { get; }
        public HtmlHelper Html { get; }
        public object Model { get; }
        public TempDataDictionary TempData { get; }
        public UrlHelper Url { get; }
        public ViewContext ViewContext { get; }
        public ViewDataDictionary ViewData { get; }
        public HtmlTextWriter Writer { get; }
    }

I want to be able to access these properties inside an HtmlHelper.

The best I've come up with is this (insert at beginning of CreateDialogLink method)

HtmlHelper Html = new HtmlHelper(htmlHelper.ViewContext, htmlHelper.ViewDataContainer);
UrlHelper Url = new UrlHelper(htmlHelper.ViewContext.RequestContext);

Am I missing some other way to access the existing HtmlHelper and UrlHelper instances - or do i really need to create a new one? I'm sure there isn't much overhead but I'd prefer to use the preexisting ones if I can.

Answer 1

Before asking this question I had looked at some of the MVC source code, but evidently I missed this, which is how they do it for the Image helper.

[System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Design", "CA1054:UriParametersShouldNotBeStrings", MessageId = "1#", Justification = "The return value is not a regular URL since it may contain ~/ ASP.NET-specific characters")]
        public static string Image(this HtmlHelper helper, string imageRelativeUrl, string alt, IDictionary<string, object> htmlAttributes) {
            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(imageRelativeUrl)) {
                throw new ArgumentException(MvcResources.Common_NullOrEmpty, "imageRelativeUrl");
            }

            UrlHelper url = new UrlHelper(helper.ViewContext);
            string imageUrl = url.Content(imageRelativeUrl);
            return Image(imageUrl, alt, htmlAttributes).ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing);
        }

Looks like instantiating a new UrlHelper is the correct approach after all. Thats good enough for me.

---

Update: RTM code from ASP.NET MVC v1.0 Source Code is slightly different as pointed out in the comments.

File: MVC\src\MvcFutures\Mvc\ImageExtensions.cs

 [System.Diagnostics.CodeAnalysis.SuppressMessage("Microsoft.Design", "CA1054:UriParametersShouldNotBeStrings", MessageId = "1#", Justification = "The return value is not a regular URL since it may contain ~/ ASP.NET-specific characters")]
        public static string Image(this HtmlHelper helper, string imageRelativeUrl, string alt, IDictionary<string, object> htmlAttributes) {
            if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(imageRelativeUrl)) {
                throw new ArgumentException(MvcResources.Common_NullOrEmpty, "imageRelativeUrl");
            }

            UrlHelper url = new UrlHelper(helper.ViewContext.RequestContext);
            string imageUrl = url.Content(imageRelativeUrl);
            return Image(imageUrl, alt, htmlAttributes).ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing);
        }