You are wanting to utilise either Html.ActionLink or Ajax.ActionLink, but you want the link to contain HTML content. The "out of the box" helpers take in a String for the link text, and if you were to add in HTML here, it would work, however the HTML would be rendered as a string on the page.
Create your own Helper Extension which returns a MvcHtmlString
public static class HtmlHelperExtensions
{
public static MvcHtmlString RawActionLink(this AjaxHelper ajaxHelper, string rawHtml, string action, string controller, object routeValues, AjaxOptions ajaxOptions, object htmlAttributes)
{
//string anchor = ajaxHelper.ActionLink("##holder##", action, controller, routeValues, ajaxOptions, htmlAttributes).ToString();
//return MvcHtmlString.Create(anchor.Replace("##holder##", rawHtml));
/* Updated code to use a generated guid as from the suggestion of Phillip Haydon */
string holder = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
string anchor = ajaxHelper.ActionLink(holder, action, controller, routeValues, ajaxOptions, htmlAttributes).ToString();
return MvcHtmlString.Create(anchor.Replace(holder, rawHtml));
}
public static MvcHtmlString RawActionLink(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, string rawHtml, string action, string controller, object routeValues, object htmlAttributes)
{
//string anchor = htmlHelper.ActionLink("##holder##", action, controller, routeValues, htmlAttributes).ToString();
//return MvcHtmlString.Create(anchor.Replace("##holder##", rawHtml));
/* Updated code to use a generated guid as from the suggestion of Phillip Haydon */
string holder = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();
string anchor = htmlHelper.ActionLink(holder, action, controller, routeValues, htmlAttributes).ToString();
return MvcHtmlString.Create(anchor.Replace(holder, rawHtml));
}
}
Then you can create both Html.RawActionLink and Ajax.RawActionLink
@Ajax.RawActionLink("<h1>Test</h1>", "Index", "Home", null, null, null)
@Html.RawActionLink("<h2>Test</h2>", "Index", "Home", null, null)
Although, having header tags within anchor tags isn't great ;)
Working example of on Github
UPDATED - Using a generated Guid as a placeholder as per the suggestion from Phillip Heydon
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