Is there a nice way to control how display templates should render null fields?

Question

Is there a way to control how built-in display templates (like decimal, string) should render null fields / empty string? I'd want to show "-" as field value for some and empty line for others.

I know I can check those fields for null in the views, but this seems like a not nice thing to do in hundreds of places.

Answer 1

Apply the NullDisplayText property of the DisplayFormat attribute to the relevant view model members.

[DisplayFormat(ConvertEmptyStringToNull = true, NullDisplayText = "-")]   
public string Name { get; set; }

Note, the DisplayFormat attribute is intended to be used with templated helpers such as EditorFor and DisplayFor (which it sounds like you are doing).