Is it possible to use an ActionLink containing an

Question

As the question says, Is it possible to use an ActionLink containing an element, and if not, what is the best way to achieve it?

For example, lets say I have a Span element, I want the whole thing to be a hyperlink... The following works:

<a href="/Site/Page/@Model.ID?Type=test">
                <span class="box5">Click anywhere in this box</span> </a>

Imagine that span/css class box5 makes this large... Was originally a DIV, but, I found that didn't follow standards and this appears to follow ok.

This renders and works fine, but, is there anyway to use an ActionLink instead? I have tried to guess the syntax such as (copying from forms):

@using (Html.Actionlink){<span class="box5">Click anywhere in this box</span>}

and many other combinations without any luck.

Now, my manual HTML workaround works fine and I am happy to leave it, but, is it possible to use a MVC ActionLink, and if it is, should I even worry/would there be any benefits?

Answer 1

There's a hack you can use to work around the limitation

@Html.Raw(
     Html
        .ActionLink("-replace-me-", .....)
        .ToString()
        .Replace(
              "-replace-me-", 
              @"<span class=""box5"">Click anywhere in this box</span>"))

it's not elegant, but it does the job

Answer 2

Just use @Url.Action instead:

<a href="@Url.Action("Page","Site", new { id = Model.Id, @Type = "test" })">
 <span class="box5">Click anywhere in this box</span> </a>

Answer 3

Just Write <span> </span> and in between the span use the @html>ActionLink Method It will work

Answer 4

You can not specify a html tag inside actionlink, but I can suggest you two solutions: 1 extend the actionlink with your function. So you can also implement actionlink that generate href with other htmal tag inside (img or span like in your case)

2 using the url.content in the href. It's like your actual workaround but better because you use the rules you have defined in the global.asax instead of using "magic string"

Answer 5

Html.ActionLink is just a plain old Extension Method to the HtmlHelper object.

You can create your own custom extension methods for HtmlHelper as well, and they're pretty simple to do and will save you tons of time.