Asp.Net Mvc highlighting current page link technique?

Question

Hello all. I need to highlight active link in the menu. My menu is in the master page by the way. I'm looking for the best way to implement this? Any ideas?

Answer 1

The best way to handle this is to write an HTML helper. You could use RouteData.Values["action"] to get the currently executing action and compare to the menu name and if they match apply a CSS class that will highlight it.

public static MvcHtmlString MenuItem(
    this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, 
    string action, 
    string text
)
{
    var menu = new TagBuilder("div");
    var currentAction = (string)htmlHelper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["action"];
    if (string.Equals(
            currentAction, 
            action,
            StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase)
    )
    {
        menu.AddCssClass("highlight");
    }
    menu.SetInnerText(text);
    return MvcHtmlString.Create(menu.ToString());
}

And then use this helper to render the menu items:

<%: Html.MenuItem("about", "About us") %>
<%: Html.MenuItem("contact", "Contact us") %>
...