MVC Razor 3 RC syntax: Bug or user error?

Question

I'd like to think this is obvious, but before I submit a bug report, I want to know that I'm not doing it wrong. I have this view using ASP.NET MVC3 RC, with Razor:

<div class="miniProfile">
    Joined: @FormatTime(Model.Joined)<br />
    @if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Model.Location)) {
        Location: @Model.Location<br />
    }
    Posts: @Model.PostCount<br />
    @Html.ActionLink("Full Profile", "ViewProfile", new { id = Model.UserID }, new { target = "_blank" }) | 
    @Html.ActionLink("Send Private Message", "SendNew", "PrivateMessages", new { id = Model.UserID }) | 
    @Html.ActionLink("Send E-mail", "Send", "Email", new { id = Model.UserID })
    @if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Model.Web)) {
        | <a href="@Model.Web" target="_blank">Visit user Web site: @Model.Web</a>
    }
</div>

It chokes at "Location" and at the pipe in the last conditional. If I insert some <text> tags, it works like this:

<div class="miniProfile">
    Joined: @FormatTime(Model.Joined)<br />
    @if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Model.Location)) {
        <text>Location: </text>@Model.Location<br />
    }
    Posts: @Model.PostCount<br />
    @Html.ActionLink("Full Profile", "ViewProfile", new { id = Model.UserID }, new { target = "_blank" }) | 
    @Html.ActionLink("Send Private Message", "SendNew", "PrivateMessages", new { id = Model.UserID }) | 
    @Html.ActionLink("Send E-mail", "Send", "Email", new { id = Model.UserID })
    @if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Model.Web)) {
        <text>| </text><a href="@Model.Web" target="_blank">Visit user Web site: @Model.Web</a>
    }
</div>

Despite some trial and error, I can't figure out what I'm doing that is naughty. Suggestions?

Answer 1

Your markup should be as follows

<div class="miniProfile">
  Joined: @FormatTime(Model.Joined)<br />
  @if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Model.Location)) {
    <text>Location: @Model.Location<br /></text>
  }
  Posts: @Model.PostCount<br />
  @Html.ActionLink("Full Profile", "ViewProfile", new { id = Model.UserID }, new { target = "_blank" }) |
  @Html.ActionLink("Send Private Message", "SendNew", "PrivateMessages", new { id = Model.UserID }) |
  @Html.ActionLink("Send E-mail", "Send", "Email", new { id = Model.UserID })
  @if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Model.Web)) {
    <text>| <a href="@Model.Web" target="_blank">Visit user Web site: @Model.Web</a></text>
  }
</div>

When you have an @if statement, anything after the curlys is still considered to be 'code' so you need to break out of it by either using a <text> tag or the @: syntax.

The reason for this behavior is that frequently you will have some sort of tag nested inside the conditional anyway, in which case things just work:

@if(condition) {
    <div>Some content</div>
}

The <text> tag is there for those case when you don't want the contents of the conditional to be wrapped in any tags.

Answer 2

You can't have just plain text content inside of a code block, the Razor engine can't figure out if it's code or markup. That's what the <text> tags are there, to remove the ambiguity. Are you saying that the <text> tags make it work (that's the answer, there's nothing more to be done), or that it still doesn't work with the <text> tags (try wrapping the whole if block in the <text> tag)?