Question

We have a custom HTML helper with the following signature.

public static MvcHtmlString TextBoxFor<TModel,
    TProperty>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> helper,
    Expression<Func<TModel, TProperty>> property)
{
    var htmlAttributes = new Dictionary<string, object>();

    // ....

    return helper.TextBoxFor(property, htmlAttributes);
}

I would like to implement the placeholder attribute here, which should be set to the label for this control. The label can either be a string constant or the string specified for the property’s [Display] attribute.

Is there any way for me to get this label from this helper function?

Answer 1

This seems to work:

ModelMetadata metadata = ModelMetadata.FromLambdaExpression(property, helper.ViewData);
string htmlFieldName = ExpressionHelper.GetExpressionText(property);
string labelText = metadata.DisplayName ?? metadata.PropertyName ?? htmlFieldName.Split('.').Last();
if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(labelText))
    // labelText contains the label