Question

So I am trying to convert this razor syntax in a .cshtml view into a helper extension in .cs. There is an awesome post on this by Darin here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8187441/1026459. However, I am having some issues getting it to work.

This is the plain markup

@using (Html.BeginForm("Restore", "GlobalCrud"))
{
 @Html.Hidden("entityId", "Id")
 <input class="ui-icon ui-icon-power" type="submit" 
  onclick="return confirm('Clicking OK will restore this record');" 
 />
}

This is the extention

public static MvcHtmlString EditOrDelete(this HtmlHelper html)
{
  var s = html.BeginForm();
  return MvcHtmlString.Create(s + " additional fields " + "</form>");
}

This is the use:

@using namespace.CustomHelper
@Html.EditOrDelete()

This is the output:

<form method="post" action="/Completed/Manage">
System.Web.Mvc.Html.MvcForm additional fields 
</form>

The helper extention for the most part produces what I need. However, I am uncertain how I should be converting this back to a proper html string. The return includes System.Web.Mvc.Html.MvcForm in the text. I am adding " additional fields " for brevity here because there is no issue there. The addition of </form> is there because I know that the normal using statement that goes with @Html.BeginForm() adds the </form> tag when it disposes.

How can I properly return the form generated by .BeginForm?

Answer 1

public static class HtmlExtensions
{
    public static void EditOrDelete(this HtmlHelper html)
    {
        using (html.BeginForm())
        {
            html.ViewContext.Writer.Write("additional fields");
        }
    }
}

and then:

@using namespace.CustomHelper
@{Html.EditOrDelete();}

emits:

<form action="/" method="post">additional fields</form>