Question

I’m just starting out with MVC, and I’m trying to build a sample, proof of concept page for mvc interaction with jquery-mobile. I’ve searched for an answer on this, but I don’t think I know enough yet to formulate proper queries.

On my view, I am trying to generate output that functions like this (sampled from the jqm demo site) :

        <ul data-role="listview" data-inset="true">
        <li><a href="index.html">
            <h3>Stephen Weber</h3>
            <p><strong>You've been invited to a meeting at Filament Group in Boston, MA</strong></p>
            <p>Hey Stephen, if you're available at 10am tomorrow, we've got a meeting with the jQuery team.</p>
            <p class="ui-li-aside"><strong>6:24</strong>PM</p>
        </a></li>
        <li><a href="index.html">
            <h3>jQuery Team</h3>
            <p><strong>Boston Conference Planning</strong></p>
            <p>In preparation for the upcoming conference in Boston, we need to start gathering a list of sponsors and speakers.</p>
            <p class="ui-li-aside"><strong>9:18</strong>AM</p>
        </a></li>
    </ul>

So, I’m working it like this :

@foreach (var item in Model) {
    <li>
          @Html.ActionLink( LargeExpandedMultiContentText, "Edit", new { id = item.SysID })
        </li>
}

My question, which I don’t know a simple way of asking, is, how, in MVC terms, do I fill the variable, so that the href generated by ActionLink() matches the style I’ve sampled from the jqm website?

I’ve tried this, and while it almost works, I’m sure its not the ‘right’ way, especially when I get to a spot of pulling “Steven Weber” and other strings out the the item/Model…plus it encodes the text, but I’m sure there’s a way to deal with that easy enough.

@foreach (var item in Model) {
    <li>
        @{ String txt =  "<h3>Stephen Weber</h3><p><strong>You've been invited to a meeting at Filament Group in Boston, MA</strong></p><p>Hey Stephen, if you're available at 10am tomorrow, we've got a meeting with the jQuery team.</p>         <p class=\"ui-li-aside\"><strong>6:24</strong>PM</p>";
        }
        @Html.ActionLink( txt, "Edit", new { id = item.SysID })
    </li>
}

Thanks, I appreciate your help

Brian

Answer 1

I’m not sure it’s possible to use Html.ActionLink to build such a complex action link. That said, the Html Helpers are just supposed to be helper functions to make your life easier by giving you shortcuts to render HTML in ways commonly required. You don’t need to use them. In this case, I think instead you should use a normal html tag, and Url.Action to create the correct URL.

If you wanted to include this information within an enumerable model I’d probably do something like:

@foreach (var item in Model) {
    <li><a href="@Url.Action(item.Action)">
        <h3>@item.Name</h3>
        <p><strong>@item.Title</strong></p>
        <p>@item.Message</p>
        <p class="ui-li-aside"><strong>@item.Time</strong>@item.TimePeriod</p>
    </a></li>
}

Note: the function you were looking for to display contents without encoding them is @Html.Raw