MVC Html Helper not being interpretend - html

Question

I was trying out custom HTML Helpers in MVC 5, but they are not being interpreted in the browser. they come out as strings.
HTML Helper class
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.Web.Routing;
public static class ImageHelper
{
public static string ImageLink(this HtmlHelper helper, string id, string imgSrc, string altText)
{
var builder = new TagBuilder("img");
builder.GenerateId(id);
builder.MergeAttribute("src", imgSrc);
builder.MergeAttribute("alt", altText);
return builder.ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing);
}
}
HTML View
#Html.ImageLink("objStatus", "/images/circle-205-i.png", "status")
Browser display:
string "<img alt="status" id="objStatus" src="/images/circle-205-i.png" />"
F12 presents it as a string not interpreted as HTML

Answer 1

Your helper is returning a string which MVC Razor will encode as HTML. The correct way is to return an MvcHtmlString like this:
public static MvcHtmlString ImageLink(this HtmlHelper helper, string id, string imgSrc, string altText)
{
var builder = new TagBuilder("img");
builder.GenerateId(id);
builder.MergeAttribute("src", imgSrc);
builder.MergeAttribute("alt", altText);
return new MvcHtmlString(builder.ToString(TagRenderMode.SelfClosing));
}
An alternative is to use Html.Raw in your view, but you would have to do that everywhere. I only mention this here as it is possible to do and the above is the preferred solution.