Razor syntax prevents escaping HTML in an ActionLink

Question

I have an ASP MVC 3 site and we are trying to put some styling into the action links.

I want the html to be something like <a href="/somepath/someaction"><span class="someclass">some text</span> some more text</a> but I can't figure out how to tell Razor to render the <span> of it correctly.

What I've tried so far:

@Html.ActionLink("<span class="someclass">some text</span> some more text", SomeAction, SomeController);

results in a link that looks like: <span class="someclass">some text</span> some more text

@Html.ActionLink("<text><span class="someclass">some text</span></text> some more text", SomeAction, SomeController);

results in a link that looks like: <text><span class="someclass">some text</span></text> some more text

@Html.ActionLink(<text>"<span class="someclass">some text</span> some more text"</text>, SomeAction, SomeController);

results in a compilation error.

Thoughts?

Answer 1

The ActionLink method cannot take HTML.

You need to make a normal <a> tag, and use @Url.Action(...) for the href.