Razor - How to store html special character in variable - html

Question

On my html page, I want to make a list from a collection of entries in my model. However, some of those entries may be null, and in that case I want to have an empty list item, like so:
Something
Something else
More stuff
I do that by inserting a non-breaking space character. (regular whitespace won't generate empty list items) Here's a code snippet:
<ul>
#{
foreach (var x in Model.Entries)
{
var rayon = x.Rayon ?? " ";
<li>#rayon</li>
}
}
</ul>
Sadly, this does not work because it instead pastes verbatim.
And removing the quotation marks, and/or adding #: at the start, won't compile.
What can I do?

Answer 1

You can use Html.Raw.
use like this
<li> #(Html.Raw(rayon)) </li>

Answer 2

Instead of " " just give a blank string:
var rayon = x.Rayon ?? string.Empty;
In fact, I think you can even just scrap that variable assignment together and just use x.Rayon as-is - a null value should have the same effect
<ul>
#{
foreach (var x in Model.Entries)
{
<li>x.Rayon</li>
}
}
</ul>
Update:
Both above work for me. So, if still not working, it looks to be down to CSS/styles on your ul.
e.g.
OK, I think this is down to CSS/styles on the ul that you have then (both above work fine for me). e.g. the following CSS would hide empty li elements:
ul li:empty {
display: none;
}
So, check out your CSS.
If you don't want to change the existing style, you could add an extra class to your CSS and apply that for just this instance.
i.e.
CSS:
ul.show-empty-li li:empty{
display:list-item;
}
HTML:
<ul class="show-empty-li">
...
</ul>