LINQ: Expressive Html Tag Building
The following is a repost from ASP.NET Weblogs. I found it useful so I am posting a copy here for my own reference.
“I hate building HTML tags in code, but it needs to be done. I just wanted to make it a little cleaner. So I came up with this method that utilizes LINQ expressions to generate the attributes for the tag. This is really only clean with simple tags, but I use it with my other tag building methods to keep them clean as well. I’ve seen others look for something like this and thought it’d be helpful posting it here. I haven’t deeply tested this code but it shows the general concept and I’m sure it needs cleaned up a little. The following is an example calling the Tag method:”
Tag( "a", "The Technical Adventures of Adam Weigert", href => "http://weblogs.asp.net/adweigert/" ); Tag( "div", "LINQ Expressions Rock", style => "font-size: 250%; font-weight: bold;", id => "title" );
“This is the actual method, I love how simple the LINQ expression makes building the attributes.”
public string Tag( string tagName, string innerHtml, params Expression<Func<string, string>>[] attributes ) { XElement tag = new XElement( XName.Get( tagName, string.Empty ) ); if ( attributes != null ) { foreach ( var attribute in attributes ) { string attributeName = attribute.Parameters[ 0 ].Name; string attributeValue = attribute.Compile()(string.Empty); tag.SetAttributeValue( XName.Get( attributeName, string.Empty ), attributeValue ); } } if ( !string.IsNullOrEmpty( innerHtml ) ) { tag.Add( XElement.Parse( "<xml>" + innerHtml + "</xml>" ).Nodes() ); } return tag.ToString(); }
Roberto Sebestyen
