In ASP.NET MVC, Microsoft has done a nice job with creating various HTML helpers that can be used in a form, e.g. LabelFor, EditorFor, ValidationMessageFor and many others.

However, despite these nice helpers, the HTML markup still tend to become rather tedious and repetitive. For instance, this HTML generates a form that can be used to create groups in a web application that I am currently working on:

@using (Html.BeginForm())
{
    @Html.ValidationSummary(true)
 
    <div class="editor-label">
        @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Name)
    </div>
    <div class="editor-field">
        @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Name)
        @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Name)
    </div>
 
    <div class="editor-label">
        @Html.LabelFor(model => model.CollectionName)
    </div>
    <div class="editor-field">
        @Html.EditorFor(model => model.CollectionName)
        @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.CollectionName)
    </div>
 
    <div class="form-buttons">
        <input type="submit" value="@this.GlobalResource(Resources.Language.Create)" />
    </div>
}

That is quite a lot of code for handling two single properties. Furthermore, the two editor blocks look rather similar, don’t you think?

I therefore decided to create a small HTML helper extension, that can be used to generate an editor block (a label, and editor and a validation message). With it, the resulting form becomes a lot shorter and much easier to handle:

@using (Html.BeginForm())
{
    @Html.ValidationSummary(true)
    @Html.EditorBlockFor(model => model.Name);
    @Html.EditorBlockFor(model => model.CollectionName);
 
    <div class="form-buttons">
        <input type="submit" value="@this.GlobalResource(Resources.Language.Create)" />
    </div>
}

As you see, this method is only to be used if you want to follow the conventions that are used by auto-generated ASP.NET MVC form code. If you do, you can save a lot of keystrokes.

I am not familiar with the MvcHtmlString type, which the native methods return, so returning an IHtmlString instead of MvcHtmlString could be a big NO, that I do not know about.

Please let me know if I have ruined the order of the universe.