ASP.net MVC - Navigation and highlighting the “current” link

Question

When you create a new MVC project it creates a Site.master with the following markup:

    

        <         


        
      

Answer 1

Here is a way to implement this as an MVC helper:

@helper NavigationLink(string linkText, string actionName, string controllerName)
{
    if(ViewContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("action").Equals(actionName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) &&
       ViewContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("controller").Equals(controllerName, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
    {
        @linkText
    }
    else
    {
        @Html.ActionLink(linkText, actionName, controllerName);
    }
}

It can then be used similar to the following:

@NavigationLink("Home", "index", "home")
@NavigationLink("About Us", "about", "home")

A good article on MVC helpers can be found here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2011/05/12/asp-net-mvc-3-and-the-helper-syntax-within-razor.aspx