What is the syntax for MVC Controller method to return @Html.ActionLink in HTML couch?

Question

Maybe a duplicate, but can't figure how to write a method in an MVC View .cs file callable to return the equivalent of @Html.ActionLink in a cshtml file.

Kind of like:

public string BrowseMenu
{
    return "<div><p>" + Html.ActionLink(" linktext ", "Action", "Controller") + "</p></div>";
}

What I want to do is return the same HTML structure with some ActionLinks in it to a bunch of different View pages in an MVC Controller, so if I am going about it the entire wrong way, that's where I am trying to get to.

Answer 1

You need to return an ActionResult from your controller to view, if you want to render some html. Otherwise, view will receive a string and display it as it is.

You can define a partial view which holds the html, and you can render this partial view in your main view.

public PartialViewResult MyActionLink()
{
    return PartialView("_MyPartialView");
}

_MyPartialView is just a view file holding the html you want to render.

---

However, I would suggest writing a custom html helper which I believe cleaner solution.

public static string MyActionLink(this HtmlHelper helper)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.Append("<div><p>"); 
    sb.Append(helper.ActionLink("Text","Action","Controller"));
    sb.Append("</p></div>")
    return sb.ToString();
}

Then you can render this custom html helper in your view via

@Html.MyActionLink()