Question

I need to display a message in the view from the controller. Here’s my code;

VIEW

@Html.LabelFor // How do i write the rest to display the message

CONTROLLER

public ActionResult Index(MyModel model)
    {

        // I Need to send a String to the Label in the View

        return View();
}

Answer 1

Arguably the more elegant solution, when called for at least, is to use a strongly-typed view (with a model – the M in MVC). A simple example could be:

The model:

public class MessageViewModel
{
    public string Message {get; set;}
}

The controller:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    var viewModel = new MessageViewModel {Message = "Hello from far away"};
    return View(viewModel);
}

The view:

@model MyNamespace.MessageViewModel

<h2>@Html.DisplayFor(model => model.Message)</h2>

Would I bother with this for a single message on a page? Surprisingly, most of the time I would. There’s something elegant about the view knowing exactly what to expect (and vice versa), Intellisense support, and the HtmlHelper‘s DisplayFor() method where you can do all kinds of implicit formatting.

---

That being said, the “simplest” (read: quick and dirty, but gets ugly quick) solution would be to stuff your message into the ViewBag dynamic object.

In the controller:

ViewBag.MyMessage = "Hello from a far away place";

In the view:

@ViewBag.MyMessage

But doing this, you lose Intellisense, repeatability (DRY), and possibly your sanity. One property used in one place, maybe (a la ViewBag.Title that the default _Layout page uses). A whole bunch of disconnected objects stuffed in the bag, no thank you.