Question

I have a user control in mvc 2.0, where i have a table of anchor tags created by using Html.ActionLink(title,action,controller). Now out of these several anchor tags, one will have a particular class applied to it, what is the best method to do this ?

Darin:) Using this, I will have to apply the conditional logic in the view itself, i have to apply class to only one of the several anchor tags based on the action. In this case I will have to check 20 times if this is the action, if I have 20 anchor tags. I want something like inherited class out of ActionLink which will check the action and apply the class based on it to only one of the anchor tags.

Answer 1

There is an overload which allows you to pass html attributes such as a CSS class:

<%= Html.ActionLink(title, action, controller, null, new { @class = "foo" }) %>

---

UPDATE:

You could also write a custom ActionLink helper which would do the job:

public static class HtmlExtensions
{
    public static MvcHtmlString MyActionLink(
        this HtmlHelper htmlHelper,
        string linkText,
        string actionName,
        string controllerName
    )
    {
        if (SomeLogic())
        {
            // If some logic is verified you could apply the CSS class
            return htmlHelper.ActionLink(
                linkText, 
                actionName, 
                controllerName, 
                null,
                new { @class = "foo" }
            );
        }
        return htmlHelper.ActionLink(
            linkText, 
            actionName, 
            controllerName, 
        );
    }
}

and then in your view:

<%= Html.MyActionLink(title, action, controller) %>