Question

I am developing an ASP.NET MVC3 application with Razor and C#. I wanted to know if there is any way to “disable” an hyperlink rendered with the Html.ActionLink helper without spoiling my View with if constructs. As for disable I mean the link becomes not clickable, greyed out and without the underline.

To make things clear I hereby attach the as-is code I currently use to make the trick. Instead of disabling the hyperlink I just display N/A as plain text.

The part of the View:

 <td>@if(topic.EnableTopicDownloadLink)
    {
        @Html.ActionLink("Presentation", "Download", new { topicId = topic.TopicId })
    }
    else
    {
         @Html.Raw("N/A");
    }           
</td>

<td>@if (topic.EnableTopicWatchLink)
    {
        @Html.ActionLink("Video", "Play", new { topicId = topic.TopicId })
    }
    else
    {
        @Html.Raw("N/A");
    }     
</td>

And the ViewModel passed to the View

public class TopicDownloadViewModel
    {
        public int TopicId { get; set; }
        public string TopicName { get; set; }
        public string TopicPresenter { get; set; }
        public string TopicStartTime { get; set; }
        public string TopicEndTime { get; set; }
        public bool EnableTopicWatchLink { get; set; }
        public bool EnableTopicDownloadLink { get; set; }

        public TopicDownloadViewModel(WebinarTopic webinarTopic)
        {
            TopicId = webinarTopic.TopicId;
            TopicName = webinarTopic.TopicName;
            TopicPresenter = webinarTopic.TopicPresenter;
            TopicStartTime = String.Format("{0:t}", webinarTopic.TopicStartTime);
            TopicEndTime = String.Format("{0:t}", webinarTopic.TopicEndTime);
            EnableTopicWatchLink = (webinarTopic.TopicVideoWatchLink != null) ? true : false;
            EnableTopicDownloadLink = (webinarTopic.TopicSlidesDownloadLink != null) ? true : false;
        }
    }

I know there is a disabled HTML attribute for <a> but the only way to enable the link is to omit the attribute and I have no clue how to do it without using jQuery. My intension is not to use jquery if feasible.

Thanks

Francesco

Answer 1

I i understood correctly, main problem is that you don’t wish to create additional If -s. I would do custom helper in your place

public static MvcHtmlString ActionLink<TModel>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> helper, string linkText, string action, object routeValues, bool disable)
    {
        if (disable)
        {
            return helper.ActionLink(linkText, action, routeValues, new { disabled = "disabled" });
        }
        return helper.ActionLink(linkText, action, routeValues);
    }

and pass the last value, as you use to, but in parameter, without @if

    @Html.ActionLink("Presentation", "Download", topic.EnableTopicDownloadLink)

My code needs modifications to accept custom htmlattributes (topicId) and merge with disabled. For this, you could use HtmlHelper.AnonymousObjectToHtmlAttributes(htmlAttributes); and merge disabled attribute with returned value in method body