Image equivalent of ActionLink in ASP.NET MVC

Question

In ASP.NET MVC is there an equivalent of the Html.ActionLink helper for Img tags?

I have a controller action that outputs a dynamically generated JPEG and I wanted to use the same Lambda expressions to link to it as I do HREFs using ActionLink.

Alternatively, a helper that just gives the URL to a route (again specified using Lambdas) would also be acceptable.

EDIT: I had originally specified that I was using Preview 5, however I see that a Beta has been released. So all-in-all the version number was an unneeded piece of info as I may be upgrading soon :-)

Answer 1

Url.Action() will get you the bare URL for most overloads of Html.ActionLink, but I think that the URL-from-lambda functionality is only available through Html.ActionLink so far. Hopefully they'll add a similar overload to Url.Action at some point.

Answer 2

You can use the URL.Action method

<a href="<%= Url.Action("Create")  %>"><img src="../../Content/Images/add_48.png" /></a>

Answer 3

This question is older, and I just started recently with ASP.NET MVC when the RC was already out, but for those who find this question later like me this might be interesting:

At least in the RC you can use Url.Action() also with anonymous types, the result looks much nicer than the suggestions above, I guess:

<a href="<%= Url.RouteUrl("MyRoute", new { param1 = "bla", param2 = 5 }) %>">
   put in <span>whatever</span> you want, also <img src="a.gif" alt="images" />.
</a>

There are many other overloads for RouteUrl as well, of course.

Answer 4

I used a workaround to place a marker instead of text for ActionLink and then replace it with my image code. Something like this:

<%= Html.ActionLink("__IMAGE_PLACEHOLDER__", "Products").Replace("__IMAGE_PLACEHOLDER__", "<img src=\"" + myImgUrl + "\" />")%>

Not the most elegant solution but it works.

Answer 5

In MVC3, your link would look like this:

<a href="@Url.Action("Create")"><img src="../../Content/Images/add_48.png" /></a>

Answer 6

In ASP.NET MVC Beta, you can use the Html.BuildUrlFromExpression method in the Futures assembly (which is not included in the default ASP.NET MVC install, but is available from CodePlex) to create a link around an image--or any HTML--using the lambda-style ActionLink syntax, like this:

<a href="<%=Html.BuildUrlFromExpression<MyController>(c => c.MyAction())%>">
     <%=Html.Image("~/Content/MyImage.gif")%>
</a>

To keep your image links borderless, you'll need to add a CSS rule like this:

img
{
     border: none;
}

Answer 7

You can use this control.It behaves like ActionLink.

http://agilefutures.com/index.php/2009/06/actionimage-aspnet-mvc

Answer 8

It's pretty simple to achieve in MVC 2. I have created my own very simple extension method to support Lambda expressions for the Url.Action helper. It requires that you reference MVC 2 Futures.
Here's the code:

using System;
using System.Linq.Expressions;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Routing;

using ExpressionHelperInternal=Microsoft.Web.Mvc.Internal.ExpressionHelper;

namespace Bnv.Bssi.Web.Infrastructure.Helpers
{
    public static class UrlExtensions
    {
        public static string Action<TController>(this UrlHelper helper, Expression<Action<TController>> action) where TController : Controller
        {
            RouteValueDictionary routeValuesFromExpression = ExpressionHelperInternal.GetRouteValuesFromExpression<TController>(action);

            return helper.Action(routeValuesFromExpression["action"].ToString(), routeValuesFromExpression);
        }
    }
}

This is how you use it:

<img src="<%= Url.Action<YourController>(c => c.YourActionMethod(param1, param2)); %>" />

Answer 9

I know that my post is too late but i wanna share :)

I added new extension method something like this :

public static class ImageExtensions
{
    public static MvcHtmlString ImageLink(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, string imgSrc, string additionalText = null, string actionName = null, string controllerName = null, object routeValues = null, object linkHtmlAttributes = null, object imgHtmlAttributes = null)
    {
        var urlHelper = ((Controller)htmlHelper.ViewContext.Controller).Url;
        var url = "#";
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(actionName))
            url = urlHelper.Action(actionName, controllerName, routeValues);

        var imglink = new TagBuilder("a");
        imglink.MergeAttribute("href", url);
        imglink.InnerHtml = htmlHelper.Image(imgSrc, imgHtmlAttributes) + " " + additionalText;
        linkHtmlAttributes = new RouteValueDictionary(linkHtmlAttributes);
        imglink.MergeAttributes((IDictionary<string, object>)linkHtmlAttributes, true);

        return MvcHtmlString.Create(imglink.ToString());
    }

    public static MvcHtmlString Image(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, string imgSrc, object imgHtmlAttributes = null)
    {
        var imgTag = new TagBuilder("img");
        imgTag.MergeAttribute("src", imgSrc);
        if (imgHtmlAttributes != null)
        {
            imgHtmlAttributes = new RouteValueDictionary(imgHtmlAttributes);
            imgTag.MergeAttributes((IDictionary<string, object>)imgHtmlAttributes, true);
        }
        return MvcHtmlString.Create(imgTag.ToString());
    }
}

Hope this helped.

Answer 10

Is Url.Content() what you're looking for?

Give it something like Url.Content("~/path/to/something.jpg") it will turn it into the appropriate path based on the application root.

-Josh

Answer 11

I took the above answers and made a bit of a wrapper extension:

    public static MvcHtmlString ActionImageLink(this HtmlHelper helper, string src, string altText, UrlHelper url, string actionName, string controllerName)
        {
            return ActionImageLink(helper, src, altText, url, actionName, controllerName, null, null);
        }

        public static MvcHtmlString ActionImageLink(this HtmlHelper helper, string src, string altText, UrlHelper url, string actionName, string controllerName, Dictionary<string, string> linkAttributes, Dictionary<string, string> imageAttributes)
        {
            return ActionImageLink(helper, src, altText, url, actionName, controllerName, null, linkAttributes, imageAttributes);
        }

        public static MvcHtmlString ActionImageLink(this HtmlHelper helper, string src, string altText, UrlHelper url, string actionName, string controllerName, dynamic routeValues, Dictionary<string, string> linkAttributes, Dictionary<string, string> imageAttributes)
        {
            var linkBuilder = new TagBuilder("a");
            linkBuilder.MergeAttribute("href", routeValues == null ? url.Action(actionName, controllerName) : url.Action(actionName, controllerName, routeValues));

            var imageBuilder = new TagBuilder("img");
            imageBuilder.MergeAttribute("src", url.Content(src));
            imageBuilder.MergeAttribute("alt", altText);

            if (linkAttributes != null)
            {
                foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> attribute in linkAttributes)
                {
                    if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(attribute.Key) && !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(attribute.Value))
                    {
                        linkBuilder.MergeAttribute(attribute.Key, attribute.Value);
                    }
                }
            }

            if (imageAttributes != null)
            {
                foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> attribute in imageAttributes)
                {
                    if (!string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(attribute.Key) && !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(attribute.Value))
                    {
                        imageBuilder.MergeAttribute(attribute.Key, attribute.Value);
                    }
                }
            }

            linkBuilder.InnerHtml = MvcHtmlString.Create(imageBuilder.ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing)).ToString();
            return MvcHtmlString.Create(linkBuilder.ToString());
        }

has made it easier for me anyway, hope it helps someone else.

Answer 12

I tried to put the output of the Html.Image into my Html.ImageLink helper.

@(new HtmlString(Html.ActionLink(Html.Image("image.gif").ToString(), "myAction", "MyController").ToString().Replace("&lt;", "<").Replace("&gt;", ">")))

The problem for me is, that the ActionLink name is encoded so I have &lt instead of <.

I just removed this encoding and the result works for me. (Is there a better way of doing this instead using replace?)

Answer 13

Adding to the other posts: in my case (asp.net mvc 3) I wanted an image link to act as a language selector so I ended up with:

  public static MvcHtmlString ImageLink(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, string imgSrc, string cultureName, object htmlAttributes, object imgHtmlAttributes, string languageRouteName = "lang", bool strictSelected = false)
        {
           UrlHelper urlHelper = ((Controller)htmlHelper.ViewContext.Controller).Url;
           TagBuilder imgTag = new TagBuilder("img");
           imgTag.MergeAttribute("src", imgSrc);
           imgTag.MergeAttributes((IDictionary<string, string>)imgHtmlAttributes, true);

           var language = htmlHelper.LanguageUrl(cultureName, languageRouteName, strictSelected);                      
           string url = language.Url;

           TagBuilder imglink = new TagBuilder("a");
           imglink.MergeAttribute("href", url);
           imglink.InnerHtml = imgTag.ToString();
           imglink.MergeAttributes((IDictionary<string, string>)htmlAttributes, true);

           //if the current page already contains the language parameter make sure the corresponding html element is marked
           string currentLanguage = htmlHelper.ViewContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("lang");
           if (cultureName.Equals(currentLanguage, StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
           {
              imglink.AddCssClass("selectedLanguage");
           }
           return new MvcHtmlString(imglink.ToString());
        }

The internalization support was done via a language route - original source here.

Answer 14

Nice solutions here, but what if you want to have more then just an image in the actionlink? This is how I do it:

     @using (Html.BeginForm("Action", "Controler", ajaxOptions))
     { 
        <button type="submit">
           <img src="image.png" />            
        </button>
     }

The drawback is that I still have to do a bit of styling on the button-element, but you can put all the html you want in there.

And it works with the Ajax helper as well: https://stackoverflow.com/a/19302438/961139