How to render plain HTML links in Asp.Net MVC loop?

Question

I would like to render a list of HTML links in ASP.NET MVC. Note that the links are absolute and external to the website being designed. The following code works:

<% foreach (var item in Model) { %>

    <tr>
        <td>
            <%= Html.Encode(item.Id) %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%= String.Format("<a href=\"{0}\">link</a>", item.Url) %>
        </td>
    </tr>

<% } %>

But I am wondering if it's really the right approach. Am I missing some obvious MVC control here?

Answer 1

I like to implement it the way the MVC framework does it, using the tag builder class. This way I can pass through the htmlAttributes parameter to add things like class or other attributes:

public static MvcHtmlString HtmlLink(this HtmlHelper html, string url, string text, object htmlAttributes)
{
 TagBuilder tb = new TagBuilder("a");
 tb.InnerHtml = text;
 tb.MergeAttributes(new RouteValueDictionary(htmlAttributes));
 tb.MergeAttribute("href", url);
 return MvcHtmlString.Create(tb.ToString(TagRenderMode.Normal));
}

May seem like overkill just to generate a link, but it means you don't have to muck about with string format patterns to insert additional HTML attributes on the link

Answer 2

You are not missing anything but good approach is to create extender method on HtmlHelper:

public static class HtmlHelpers
    {

        public static string SimpleLink(this HtmlHelper html, string url, string text)
        {
            return String.Format("<a href=\"{0}\">{1}</a>", url, text);
        }

    }

then you can use it like this:

<tr>
        <td>
            <%= Html.Encode(item.Id) %>
        </td>
        <td>
            <%= Html.SimpleLink(item.Url,item.Text) %>
        </td>
    </tr>

[edit] I forgot to add. In order to use this HtmlHelper extender throughout application you need to add the following in the web config file:

<system.web>
      <pages>
         <namespaces>
            <!-- leave rest as-is -->
            <add namespace="theNamespaceWhereHtmlHelpersClassIs"/>
        </namespaces>
      </pages>
    </system.web>

Answer 3

I would rather use

<td><a href="<%= item.Url %>">link</a></td>

seems somewhat "cleaner" to me, but I think your approach just as good.