HTML.ActionLink method

Question

I think what you want is this:

ASP.NET MVC1

Html.ActionLink(article.Title, 
                "Login",  // <-- Controller Name.
                "Item",   // <-- ActionMethod
                new { id = article.ArticleID }, // <-- Route arguments.
                null  // <-- htmlArguments .. which are none. You need this value
                      //     otherwise you call the WRONG method ...
                      //     (refer to comments, below).
                )

This uses the following method ActionLink signature:

public static string ActionLink(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, 
                                string linkText,
                                string controllerName,
                                string actionName,
                                object values, 
                                object htmlAttributes)

ASP.NET MVC2

two arguments have been switched around

Html.ActionLink(article.Title, 
                "Item",   // <-- ActionMethod
                "Login",  // <-- Controller Name.
                new { id = article.ArticleID }, // <-- Route arguments.
                null  // <-- htmlArguments .. which are none. You need this value
                      //     otherwise you call the WRONG method ...
                      //     (refer to comments, below).
                )

This uses the following method ActionLink signature:

public static string ActionLink(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, 
                                string linkText,
                                string actionName,
                                string controllerName,
                                object values, 
                                object htmlAttributes)

ASP.NET MVC3+

arguments are in the same order as MVC2, however the id value is no longer required:

Html.ActionLink(article.Title, 
                "Item",   // <-- ActionMethod
                "Login",  // <-- Controller Name.
                new { article.ArticleID }, // <-- Route arguments.
                null  // <-- htmlArguments .. which are none. You need this value
                      //     otherwise you call the WRONG method ...
                      //     (refer to comments, below).
                )

This avoids hard-coding any routing logic into the link.

 <a href="/Item/Login/5">Title</a> 

This will give you the following html output, assuming:

1. article.Title = "Title"
2. article.ArticleID = 5
3. you still have the following route defined

. .

routes.MapRoute(
    "Default",     // Route name
    "{controller}/{action}/{id}",                           // URL with parameters
    new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = "" }  // Parameter defaults
);

I wanted to add to Joseph Kingry's answer. He provided the solution but at first I couldn't get it to work either and got a result just like Adhip Gupta. And then I realized that the route has to exist in the first place and the parameters need to match the route exactly. So I had an id and then a text parameter for my route which also needed to be included too.

Html.ActionLink(article.Title, "Login", "Item", new { id = article.ArticleID, title = article.Title }, null)

You might want to look at the RouteLink() method.That one lets you specify everything (except the link text and route name) via a dictionary.

I think that Joseph flipped controller and action. First comes the action then the controller. This is somewhat strange, but the way the signature looks.

Just to clarify things, this is the version that works (adaption of Joseph's example):

Html.ActionLink(article.Title, 
    "Login",  // <-- ActionMethod
    "Item",   // <-- Controller Name
    new { id = article.ArticleID }, // <-- Route arguments.
    null  // <-- htmlArguments .. which are none
    )