Question

Using @Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.MyField) will (normally?) result in <input id="MyField" name="MyField" type="text" value="" /> and if I want to access that element in jquery I do so as follows $("#MyField"). Is there a way to avoid manually typing the ID into the jquery selector? It seems clunky to me to do it this way as I’m coming from a classic asp.net background where you would pull the id of the element using the ClientID property. Therefore if the renderer changed how it generated the ID ones code automatically kept up-to-date. In the above example if I change MyField to MyNewField the compiler will remind me to change all the strongly typed references, but nothing will remind me to change my jquery selector.

Answer 1

Write a simple method that get a property and return it’s name with reflection and use it like this:

static string GetVariableName<T>(Expression<Func<T>> expression)
{
    var body = expression.Body as MemberExpression;

    return body.Member.Name;
}

$('#' + @(GetVariableName(() => Model.MyField)))

Should work.