How to specify an area name in an action link?

Question

I have a shared master page which I am using from 2 different areas in my mvc 2 app. The master page has an action link which currently specifies the controller and action, but of course the link doesn't work if I'm in the wrong area. I see no overload for actionlink that takes an area parameter, is it possible to do?

Solution 1

Figured it out..

Html.ActionLink("Link Text", "ActionName", "ControllerName", new { Area = "AreaName" }, new{})

Solution 2

Something I ran into right after this, that I imagine others might run into: If you need to link from within an area to an action not in an area, you still need to specify the Area as empty string.

For instance, I moved some MVC code into an area, and found I needed to update urls in the master page that referenced other pages on the site.

To specify an url to something not in an area, use

Html.ActionLink("home", "Index", new { area = "", controller = "Home" })

Solution 3

Use:

 Html.ActionLink("Text", "ActionName", "ControllerName", new { Area = "AreaName" }, null)

Note:4th parameter is to pass route Values, if you pass an empty parameter it will consider root structure and if you pass appropriate value it use it as area.

Also do not forget to use null or new{} as the 5th parameter because passing null or new {} while creating action link will not overload method for (text,action,controller,route data) or its (text,action,controller,route data,html attribute) so use the proper method

Solution 4

In MVC2 giving area="root" worked for me as below

Html.ActionLink("Home", "Index", "Home", new { Area = "root" }, new{})

Solution 5

A neat trick you can do if you are using an area a lot in a View is define it as a variable at the top:

@{ var awesomeArea = new { area = "Awesome" }; }

@Html.Action("Something", "Somewhere", awesomeArea)
@Html.ActionLink("Stuff", "FooBar", awesomeArea)

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Comments

[Alexander Beletsky]

This is a very good tip! But it gives not expected results with MVC 2.. Small correction - Html.ActionLink("home", "Index", new { area = "", controller = "Home" })

[Jeremy]

@Pure.Krome - yes. Nothing intuitive about it!

[Piotr Kula]

Make sure there is not white space before or after the Areaname. Otherwise it will just ignore it... and then will make you wonder four hours what is wrong.. just like me.

[Yorro]

How do you add parameters in there?

[Travis J]

Explicitly setting the htmlAttributes: worked very well for using multiple parameters.

[FrenkyB]

How does this look like translated into link? I mean - when form is rendered and returned to the client.