I have a razor view where I'm currently using code that looks something like this:
@if(Model.IsLink)
{
<a href="...">
}
Some text that needs to appear
@if(Model.IsLink)
{
</a>
}
This works but the code doesn't feel clean. Is there a better/more accepted way of accomplishing this pattern?
You could create a custom HtmlHelper method. See the reference on how to do that here: http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/older-versions/views/creating-custom-html-helpers-cs
Your method could take the "IsLink" boolean as a parameter, and use it to either output an anchor or plain text. Here's a sample of what that might look like:
namespace MvcApplication1.Helpers
{
public static class LabelExtensions
{
public static string LinkableText(this HtmlHelper helper, bool isLink, string text, string url = null)
{
return isLink ? string.Format("<a href='{0}'>{1}</a>", url, text) : text;
}
}
}
Here is a simple method I think is a little cleaner.
Set the text to a variable at the top of the view:
@{
var someText = "Some text that must appear";
}
Then output conditionally:
@if (Model.IsLink)
{
<a href='#'>@someText </a>
}
else
{
@someText
}
The multi-line if statement above avoids doing string construction with HTML, but if you want to condense the syntax down to one line you can do this.
@Html.Raw(Model.IsLink?String.Format("<a href='#'>{0}</a>",someText):someText)
In HTML 5 it is valid to have markup like this if you do not have a link
<a>some text</a>
and markup like this if you do
<a href="http://example.com">some text</a>
And as of razor v2 your null conditional attributes take care of the href, so your code can be like this.
<a href="@link">some text</a>
If @link is null the href attribute will be omitted.
