Overloading ActionLink in MVC and htmlAttributes

Question

I have a function that overloads actionlink and simply adds a new parameter to the route values "ID", which I'm using all over the place.

Here is my code so far:

public static MvcHtmlString ReportActionLink(this HtmlHelper helper, string linkText, string actionName, string controllerName, object routeValues, object htmlAttributes)
{
    RouteValueDictionary routeValueDictionary = new RouteValueDictionary(routeValues);
    routeValueDictionary.Add("id", HttpContext.Current.Request.RequestContext.RouteData.Values["id"]);

    IDictionary<string, object> attrs = new RouteValueDictionary(htmlAttributes);

    return helper.ActionLink(linkText, actionName, controllerName, routeValueDictionary, attrs);        
}

As you can see, I pass in the routeValues, convert them to a dictionary and add my ID.

The problem occurs when I convert my htmlAttributes to and IDictionary because the overloaded method expects that, it doesn't replace the underscores in my properties, ie

data_event = "something" does NOT become data-event = "something" as it does with the anonymous type. It renders with the underscore. I wonder why this is and if there isn't a way to convert it?

Answer 1

You just need to pass the htmlAttributes object through HtmlHelper.AnonymousObjectToHtmlAttributes instead of using the provided RouteValueDictionary constructor.

From MSDN:

Return Value
Type: System.Web.Routing.RouteValueDictionary
The HTML attributes with underscore characters replaced by hyphens.