Client Id for Property (ASP.Net MVC)

Question

I'm a begginer in asp.net mvc, and I have a doubt:

I'm trying to do a label for a TextBox in my View and I'd like to know, how can I take a Id that will be render in client to generete scripts... for example:

<label for="<%=x.Name.ClientId%>"> Name: </label>
<%=Html.TextBoxFor(x=>x.Name) %>

What need I put in "ClientId" to make sure that correct Id will be render to the corresponding control ?

Thanks

Cheers

Answer 1

As has been said, you don't need to worry about ClientID, UniqueID etc in ASP.NET MVC as those are webforms abstractions. You can simply just write out the ID that you want. There is also an extension method for this:

<%= Html.LabelFor(x => x.Name) %>

Answer 2

Use the following:

Model.Name

You can simply do a "view source" or examine the rendered textbox with something like Firebug to see what the Html.xyzFor() methods are generating. Normally they would generate a textbox with the "id" and "name" attributes both set to the property name.

Answer 3

Put this code somewhere:

using System; 
using System.Linq.Expressions; 
using System.Web.Mvc; 

namespace MvcLibrary.Extensions 
{ 
    public static class HtmlExtensions 
    { 
        public static MvcHtmlString FieldIdFor<TModel, TValue>(this HtmlHelper<TModel> html,
            Expression<Func<TModel, TValue>> expression) 
        { 
            string htmlFieldName = ExpressionHelper.GetExpressionText(expression); 
            string inputFieldId = html.ViewContext.ViewData.TemplateInfo.GetFullHtmlFieldId(htmlFieldName); 
            return MvcHtmlString.Create(inputFieldId); 
        } 
    } 
}

Then in your ASPX view:

<label for="<%= Html.FieldIdFor(m => m.EmailAddress) %>">E-mail address:</label> 
<%= Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.EmailAddress) %>

You can also use this in JavaScript calls as you won't know the control's ID in advance and may need it for some JavaScript code to work against it:

<script> $.CoolJQueryFunction('<%= Html.FieldIdFor(m => m.EmailAddress) %>'); </script>

The LabelFor HTML helper method, that someone mentioned here, won't let you specify the actual text label you want to use, you have to decorate your ViewModels with attributes to set the label text, with IMHO is ugly. I'd rather that stuff appear in the actual ASPX view part itself, not on some domain/view model. Some people will disagree with me though.

Not sure of the rules for posting links to one's blog posts, but I posted a blog on this exact topic: http://www.dominicpettifer.co.uk/Blog/37/strongly-typed--label--elements-in-asp-net-mvc-2

Answer 4

Its fun what can be found at free source code of MVC. Here is the answer:

@Html.IdFor or @Html.NameFor

So what is the difference? Here is the catch:

The NameFor would not replace any "." to "_".

If you want any example, I have found this cool small article

Answer 5

MVC 4 has this built in now.. see this