ID generation for HTML elements in ASP.NET MVC

Question

I need to generate unique identifiers for html elements in asp.net mvc application. In classic asp.net i could use

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Answer 1

I liked the answer you provided in your Update better than using a Guid, because the latter will be different each time which makes client-side debugging and finding an element in View Source more difficult.

I took it a step further and added a custom prefix.. each prefix uses its own counter to help even further in that regard.

    public static string GetUniqueHtmlid(this HtmlHelper html, string prefix)
    {
        var generator = html.ViewContext.HttpContext.Items[typeof (UniqueHtmlIdGenerator)] as UniqueHtmlIdGenerator;

        if(generator == null)
            html.ViewContext.HttpContext.Items[typeof(UniqueHtmlIdGenerator)] = generator = new UniqueHtmlIdGenerator();

        return generator.GetNextUniqueId(prefix);
    }

    private class UniqueHtmlIdGenerator
    {
        private readonly Dictionary _items = new Dictionary();

        public string GetNextUniqueId(string prefix)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(prefix))
                prefix = "item";

            int current;

            lock (typeof (UniqueHtmlIdGenerator))
            {
                current = _items.ContainsKey(prefix) ? _items[prefix] : 1;

                _items[prefix] = current + 1;
            }

            return string.Format("{0}-{1}", prefix, current);
        }
    }