How to work with Action Link when using CSS

Answer 1

The standard ActionLink helper always HTML encodes the link text. This means that you cannot use it if you want to render HTML inside. You have 3 possibilities:

1. Modify your CSS so that you don't need a span inside the link and so that the rtsTxt class could directly be applied to the link

2. Write a custom ActionLink helper that doesn't HTML encode the text and which would allow you to generate the same markup:

   public static class ActionLinkExtensions
   {
       public static IHtmlString ActionLinkUnencoded(
           this HtmlHelper htmlHelper, 
           string linkText, 
           string actionName, 
           object routeValues, 
           object htmlAttributes
       )
       {
           var urlHelper = new UrlHelper(htmlHelper.ViewContext.RequestContext);
           var link = new TagBuilder("a");
           link.MergeAttributes(new RouteValueDictionary(htmlAttributes));
           link.Attributes["href"] = urlHelper.Action(actionName, routeValues);
           link.InnerHtml = linkText;
           return new HtmlString(link.ToString());
       }
   }
   

   and then:

   <li>
       @Html.ActionLinkUnencoded(
           "<span class=\"rtsTxt\">User Security</span>", 
           "index", 
           new { area = "Tools", controller = "UserSecurity" }, 
           new { @class = "rtsLink" }
       )
   </li>
   

3. Use the Url.Action helper:

   <li class="rtsLI">
       <a href="@Url.Action("index", new { area = "Tools", controller = "UserSecurity" })" class="rtsLink">
           <span class="rtsTxt">User Security</span>
       </a>
   </li>
   

Answer 2

Write code this way:

<li class="rtsLI" >@Html.ActionLink("<span class='rtsTxt'>User Security</span>", "Index", new { Area = "Tools", Controller = "UserSecurity" }, new { @class = "rtsLink"})</li>`

Answer 3

Best option will be to use @Url.Action extension method

<li class="rtsLI" id="Summary"><a href="@Url.Action("Index", new { Area = "Tools", Controller = "UserSecurity" })" class="rtsLink"><span class="rtsTxt">User Security</span></a></li>