How do I get over my fears of <% %> in my ASP.Net MVC markup?

Question

So I totally buy into the basic tenents of ASP.NET, testability, SoC, HTML control...it's awesome. However being new to it I have a huge hang up with the markup. I know it comes from my hatred of classic ASP, and I can't help but feel like I've entered the twilight zone when I see this.

I don't know what the alternative is (can I use server controls, databinding etc...?)

Answer 1

There are things you can do to help clean up the markup, but I agree it can get a bit tag-soupy.

• You can make your own HTML helpers to output data using extension methods, so you can hide away some of the if/else logic, iteration, etc
• Strongly type your views so you can do ViewData.Model.myProperty rather than (MyClasst)ViewData["foo"].myProperty

For instance this is an extension I made to make an RSS-spitter-outer :)

  public static string RSSRepeater<T>(this HtmlHelper html, IEnumerable<T> rss) where T : IRSSable
    {
        StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();

        if (rss.Count() > 0)
        {
            foreach (IRSSable item in rss)
            {
                result.Append("<item>").Append(item.GetRSSItem().InnerXml).Append("</item>");
            }
        }

        return result.ToString();
    }

So in my front end all I have is <%=Html.RSSRepeater(mydata)%> which is much nicer.