Html.RenderAction not working in MVC 4 for dynamic CSS path

Question

I have a problem getting my layout.cshtml to have a dynamically chosen CSS file based on some business logic.

In my layout.cshtml I have the following in my head section:

<head>
    <link href="@{Html.RenderAction("CustomStyleSheetPath", "Shared");}" rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>

In my 'Shared' Controller, I have:

[ChildActionOnly]
public virtual string CustomStyleSheetPath()
{
    string customCssPath = GetCssPath();  // e.g. "css/customStyleSheet.css"
    return customCssPath;
}

When I display the page, the css not pulled in correctly and I have the following when I view source:

<head>
    <linkcss\customStyleSheet.css href="" rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>

This code used to work in MVC 3 so I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong?

nemesv · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-07 08:08:38Z

2

Use Html.Action instead of Html.RenderAction

<link href="@(Html.Action("CustomStyleSheetPath)", "Shared"))" 
      rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Html.Action will return the rendered HTML in an McvHtmlString while Html.RenderAction writes directly to the response.

In MVC4 there is a new feature called conditional attributes that's why it is not working.

Because Html.RenderAction won't return anything so the attribute href won't be rendered but the other hand Html.RenderAction writes directly to the response so you get this messed up result.

answered Sep 7, 2012 at 8:08

nemesv

140k16 gold badges424 silver badges364 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Paul Bullivant Over a year ago

Thanks. That's worked perfectly. Thanks for the clarification on the difference between the RenderAction and Action

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Html.RenderAction not working in MVC 4 for dynamic CSS path

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related