MVC Razor need to get Substring

Question

I have the following inside of my view

     @Html.DisplayFor(modelItem => item.FirstName)

I need to get the first initial of the First N

Answer 1

You can use a custom extension method as shown below:

/// <summary>
/// Returns only the first n characters of a String.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="str"></param>
/// <param name="start"></param>
/// <param name="maxLength"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public static string TruncateString(this string str, int start, int maxLength)
{        
    return str.Substring(start, Math.Min(str.Length, maxLength));
}

Hope this helps...

Answer 2

Might I suggest that the view is not the right place to do this. You should probably have a separate model property, FirstInitial, that contains the logic. Your view should simply display this.

  public class Person
  {
       public string FirstName { get; set; }

       public string FirstInitial
       {
           get { return FirstName != null ? FirstName.Substring(0,1) : ""; }
       }

       ...
   }


   @Html.DisplayFor( modelItem => modelItem.FirstInitial )