Building HtmlStrings in ASP.NET MVC

Question

I have an extension method that needs to return an HtmlString. The method has a loop which will build the HtmlString, however the HtmlString object has no Append method and does not allow concatenation using the + operator so I am not sure how I would build the HtmlString.

I'd like to use the StringBuilder but it doesn't have a ToHtmlString method...

Any solutions or patterns for this?

Answer 1

I think you want to use TagBuilder. See also Using the TagBuilder Class to Build HTML Helpers like this:

// Create tag builder
var builder = new TagBuilder("img");

// Create valid id
builder.GenerateId(id);

// Add attributes
builder.MergeAttribute("src", url);
builder.MergeAttribute("alt", alternateText);
builder.MergeAttributes(new RouteValueDictionary(htmlAttributes));

// Render tag
return builder.ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing);