Question

I need to create an HtmlHelperextension to render an Autocomplete. Something like this:

@Html.AutoCompleteFor(x => x.CustomerId);

The problem is that the Html.RenderPartial(...) returns void, so my AutoCompleteFor method must also be void. But Razor won’t let it compile because @Html.X will only compile if X returns an Object.

I know I can bypass this problem by calling this, instead:

@{ Html.AutoCompleteFor(x => x.CustomerId); }

But that will make my code to look inconsistent with the @Html.EditorFor

I need to return a PartialView from inside my an HtmlHelper

Some considerations:

• I know you might think that this would be, somehow, breaking the MVC pattern, but MVC itself does that. The Html.EditorFor will try to find a view and return it.
• I’m only trying to do that because I need foreign-key property to use jQuery-AutoComplete by default. I wasn’t able to tell MVC to use my template for foreign-key properties.

Answer 1

You should call Html.Partial, which returns a HelperResult object rather than writing directly to the page.
You can then return the HelperResult to the caller.

Technically, you could also just return null, but that would be a really dumb idea.