ASP.NET MVC - Current Page highlighting in navigation

Question

I\'m wondering how is it possible to add a CSS Class to the current page in your navigation when using ASP.NET MVC 3? Here is my navigation in my _Layout.cshtml file:

<

Answer 1

I would recommend using an extension method for this. Something like:

public static HtmlString NavigationLink(
    this HtmlHelper html,
    string linkText,
    string actionName,
    string controllerName)
{
    string contextAction = (string)html.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"];
    string contextController = (string)html.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"];

    bool isCurrent =
        string.Equals(contextAction, actionName, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase) &&
        string.Equals(contextController, controllerName, StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase);

    return html.ActionLink(
        linkText,
        actionName,
        controllerName,
        routeValues: null,
        htmlAttributes: isCurrent ? new { @class = "current" } : null);
}

Then you can use it in your View by including the namespace of your extension and just calling your method:

@using MyExtensionNamespace;

...

  @Html.NavigationLink("Product Search", "Index", "Home")
| @Html.NavigationLink("Orders", "Index", "Orders") 
| @Html.NavigationLink("My Account", "MyAccount", "Account")
| @Html.NavigationLink("Logout", "LogOff", "Account")

This has the benefit of keeping your razor a little cleaner and is easily reusable in other views.