How to get the MVC contrib grid custom colum working with aspx

Question

I am using the MVC Contrib Grid for rendering, sorting and filtering my data grid, but I am having problems now that it has been upgraded for MVC3 and Razor. The Custom method in my columns collection does not work for aspx pages , and the columns Action method is now obsolete.

I use grids action method to render my columns like this in MVC 2:

 ...
 <% Html.Grid(Model).Columns(column => {
            column.For(x => x.Id);
            column.For(x => x.Name);
            column.For(x => x.Email);
            column.For(x => x.DateOfBirth);
            column.For("View User").Named("Tools").Action(x => { %>
                 <td>
                   <%= Html.ActionLink("View", "View", new { id = p.Id })%>
                   <%= Html.ActionLink("Edit ", "Edit", new { id = p.Id })%>
                   //Snip as there are too many tools :-)
                   //.....
                   <%= Html.ActionLink("Delete", "Delete", new { id = p.Id })%>
                </td>
            <% });
 ...

Now with the latest version there is a Custom method that replaces the obsolete Action method. I looked at how it can be done in here, which basically works for me now, but I loose all my helpers in the aspx view (url, etc), and now need to render my contents in another method in my model like below:

 ...
 <% Html.Grid(Model).Columns(column => {
            column.For(x => x.Id);
            column.For(x => x.Name);
            column.For(x => x.Email);
            column.For(x => x.DateOfBirth);
            //the new custom column 
            column.Custom(Model.ToolsRenderer);
            <% });
 ...

The grid model method below called ToolsRenderer is used to render my html string.

 public UserManagementViewModel : BaseModel {
   //..snip
   //
     public object ToolsRenderer(Client client)
     {
        List<string> links = new List<string>();

        var editLink = new TagBuilder("a");
        // here is my biggest problem, before  Html.ActionLink used to make
        // sure that I don't have any missing links or help me if i need to 
        // refactor an action / controller name :-(
        editLink.Attributes["href"] = GetEditUserLink(client,   HttpContext.Current.Request.Url.AbsoluteUri);
        editLink.SetInnerText("edit");
        links.Add(editLink.ToString());
        ...
        ...lots of links to be generated here
        ...
        return MvcHtmlString.Create(string.join(" |", links))
        }
   //..snip
}

This works for now, but is there a way to get my aspx page working like the razor views like below?

@Html.Grid(Model).Columns(column =>
{
  column.For(x => x.Id).
  column.For(x => x.Name);
  column.Custom(@<td><a href='@Html.Actionlink("edit","user",new {id})' alt="@item.email"/><a></td>)

})

I want to say something like:

...     
column.Custom(%><td><a href='<%=Html.Actionlink("edit","user",new {id})%>' alt="<%=item.email%>"/><a></td><%)
...

Answer 1

Finally managed to find a work around with some help and digging, and instead of using the custom column, use column.for and push in the Html.Partial. Something like the code below.

<% Html.Grid(Model).Columns(column => {
        column.For(x => x.Id);
        column.For(x => x.Name);
        column.For(x => x.Email);
        column.For(x => x.DateOfBirth);

        // could use RenderPartial() to
        column.For(x =>Html.Partial("UserActionColumn", x));

        <% });

Answer 2

For Razor case @helper can be used for custom fields.

For example:

column.For(r => Status(r.Status)).Encode(false).Named("Status");

@helper Status(string value)
{
    if (value == RequestStatus.Pending)
    {
        <span class="label label-info">@value</span>
    }
    ...
}

Answer 3

Complementing the other answers, if you want to sort by that custom column, don't forget to add a SortColumnName. If you don't do this, the grid will use the Named argument as the column name, but Named is also used to give a title to the column. I just got a headache because my column name didn't match the title:

column.For(c => "custom text").Named("Column Name").SortColumnName("ColumnName");