Display an HTML Code like ® or © in an Html.ActionLink Text

Question

unfortunately, I was not successful with my research for this topic. With an anchor tag, I was able to do this:

<a href="..."> My Link &reg </a>

Now I want the same with an Html.Actionlink:

@Html.ActionLink("My Link &reg", "Action")

But the output is the same as the input and not a reg symbol as it is intended. Any idea?

Thanks in advance!

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 16 '12 at 09:30

2

@Html.ActionLink("My Link ®", "Action")

or

<a href="@Url.Action("Action")"> My Link &reg </a>

answered Jul 16 '12 at 09:30

ldp

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At the beginning I thought the same as your first suggestion but ain't it a bad code style if you see special characters in your code? – LFish Jul 19 '12 at 06:54

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 16 '12 at 09:31

1

ActionLink always use call of HttpUtility.Encode for the link text.

You can use UrlHelper Method like

<a href="@Url.Action("Action")">My Link &reg</a>

answered Jul 16 '12 at 09:31

Yograj Gupta

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score 1 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:09

1

You can use an HtmlString (MvcHtmlString in .NET 2 / MVC 2) to indicate that you do not wish it to be re-encoded:

@Html.ActionLink(new HtmlString("My Link &reg"), "Action");

edited May 23 '17 at 10:09

Community

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1

answered Jul 16 '12 at 09:59

Richard Szalay

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Looks right, but Html.ActionLink does not accept HtmlString as an input type (it has to be string, not HtmlString) – LFish Jul 19 '12 at 06:49
Damn, though it shouldn't be difficult to whip up an overloaded extension method that does. – Richard Szalay Jul 19 '12 at 08:03
Ignore my previous comment. Went ahead and implemented this. See my answer here: http://stackoverflow.com/a/14488497/1015595 – Big McLargeHuge Jan 23 '13 at 20:25

Big McLargeHuge · Answer 4 · 2013-01-23T20:23:52.593

Here is how I solved this in MVC 2:

/// <summary>
/// Creates an anchor tag based on the passed in controller type and method.
/// Does NOT encode passed in link text.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="TController">The controller type</typeparam>
/// <param name="htmlHelper">The HTML helper</param>
/// <param name="action">The method to route to</param>
/// <param name="linkText">The linked text to appear on the page</param>
/// <returns>A formatted anchor tag</returns>
public static MvcHtmlString ActionLink<TController>( this HtmlHelper htmlHelper,
                                                     Expression<Action<TController>> action,
                                                     HtmlString linkText ) where TController : Controller
{
    return ActionLink( htmlHelper, action, linkText, null, null );
}

/// <summary>
/// Creates an anchor tag based on the passed in controller type and method.
/// Does NOT encode passed in link text.
/// </summary>
/// <typeparam name="TController">The controller type</typeparam>
/// <param name="htmlHelper">The HTML helper</param>
/// <param name="action">The method to route to</param>
/// <param name="linkText">The linked text to appear on the page</param>
/// <param name="routeValues">The route values</param>
/// <param name="htmlAttributes">The HTML attributes</param>
/// <returns>A formatted anchor tag</returns>
public static MvcHtmlString ActionLink<TController>( this HtmlHelper htmlHelper,
                                                     Expression<Action<TController>> action,
                                                     HtmlString linkText,
                                                     object routeValues,
                                                     object htmlAttributes ) where TController : Controller
{
    var routingValues = GetRouteValuesFromExpression( action, routeValues );

    var url = UrlHelper.GenerateUrl( null, //routeName
                                     null, //actionName
                                     null, //controllerName
                                     routingValues,
                                     htmlHelper.RouteCollection,
                                     htmlHelper.ViewContext.RequestContext,
                                     false ); //includeImplicitMvcValues

    var tagBuilder = new TagBuilder("a")
        { 
            InnerHtml = !String.IsNullOrEmpty( linkText.ToString() ) ? linkText.ToString() : String.Empty
        };

    tagBuilder.MergeAttributes( (IDictionary<string, object>)htmlAttributes );
    tagBuilder.MergeAttribute( "href", url );

    return MvcHtmlString.Create( tagBuilder.ToString( TagRenderMode.Normal ) );
}

It is strongly typed, as in the MVC futures NuGet package. So you can use it like this:

<%= Html.ActionLink<HomeController>( x => x.Index(),
                                     new HtmlString( "Don't Encode Me!<sup>&reg;</sup>" ) ) %>

Display an HTML Code like ® or © in an Html.ActionLink Text

4 Answers4