Conditionally add htmlAttributes to ASP.NET MVC Html.ActionLink

Question

I'm wondering if it's possible to conditionally add a parameter in a call to a method.

For example, I am rendering a bunch of links (six total) for navigation in my Site.Master:

<%= Html.ActionLink("About", "About", "Pages") %> | 
<%= Html.ActionLink("Contact", "Contact", "Pages") %>
<%-- etc, etc. --%>

I'd like to include a CSS class of "selected" for the link if it's on that page. So in my controller I'm returning this:

ViewData.Add("CurrentPage", "About");
return View();

And then in the view I have an htmlAttributes dictionary:

<% Dictionary<string,object> htmlAttributes = new Dictionary<string,object>();
   htmlAttributes.Add("class","selected");%>

Now my only question is how do I include the htmlAttributes for the proper ActionLink. I could do it this way for each link:

<% htmlAttributes.Clear();
   if (ViewData["CurrentPage"] == "Contact") htmlAttributes.Add("class","selected");%>
<%= Html.ActionLink("Contact", "Contact", "Pages", htmlAttributes) %>

But that seems a little repetitive. Is there some way to do something like this psuedo code:

<%= Html.ActionLink("Contact", "Contact", "Pages", if(ViewData["CurrentPage"] == "Contact") { htmlAttributes }) %>

That's obviously not valid syntax, but is there a correct way to do that? I'm open to any totally different suggestions for rendering these links. I'd like to stay with something like ActionLink that takes advantage of using my routes though instead of hard coding the tag.

SLaks · Accepted Answer · 2010-05-13 04:16:55Z

15

Here are three options:

<%= Html.ActionLink("Contact", "Contact", "Pages", 
         new { @class = ViewData["CurrentPage"] == "Contact" ? "selected" : "" }) %>

<%= Html.ActionLink("Contact", "Contact", "Pages", 
         ViewData["CurrentPage"] == "Contact" ? new { @class = "selected" } : null) %>

<a href="<%=Url.Action("Contact", "Pages")%>" 
   class="<%=ViewData["CurrentPage"] == "Contact" ? "selected" : "" %>">Contact</a>

answered May 13, 2010 at 4:16

SLaks

891k182 gold badges1.9k silver badges2k bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

arviman Over a year ago

I find that this doesn't work for the disabled attribute, since the browser disables html elements for the case of disabled="". Writing your own html helper method seems to be the only solution for that case .

Albert Bori Over a year ago

As of MVC 4, you can set any attribute to null and it will not render the attribute at all.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Conditionally add htmlAttributes to ASP.NET MVC Html.ActionLink

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related