Question

I have an ASP.NET MVC View with the typical TitleContent and MainContent, with a fairly complicated title that I want to calculate once and then share between these two content sections, like so:

<%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<dynamic>" %>
<%
    var complicatedTitle = string.Format("{0} - {1}", Model.FirstThing, Model.SecondThing);
%>
<asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="TitleContent" runat="server">
    <%: complicatedTitle %>
</asp:Content>

<asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server">

    <h2><%: complicatedTitle %></h2>

</asp:Content>

This, however, doesn’t work, as the resulting error message would say that only Content controls are allowed directly in a content page that contains Content controls.

The calculation definately belongs in the view. How do you solve this problem?

Answer 1

Another way is by adding an HTML helper specifically to produce the well-formatted title.

public static string FormattedTitle(this HtmlHelper helper, string firstPart, string secondPart)
{
    return firstPart + secondPart;
}

and then invoke it with

<%: Html.FormattedTitle(firstPart, secondPart) %>