Use MvcContrib.FluentHtml With Spark View Engine

Introduction

MvcContrib.FluentHtml is a library of extensible HTML helpers for MS MVC.  It works out of the box with the WebForms view engine. As it turns out, it’s not very hard to use with other view engines.  Read on to see how to use FluentHtml with the Spark view engine.

View Class

First, you need to add a class to your project, something like this:

public abstract class SparkModelViewPage<T> : SparkView<T>, IViewModelContainer<T> where T : class
{
    private readonly List<IBehaviorMarker> behaviors = new List<IBehaviorMarker>();

    protected SparkModelViewPage()
    {
        behaviors.Add(new ValidationBehavior(() => ViewData.ModelState));
        //add any other desired behaviors here
    }

    public string HtmlNamePrefix { get; set; }

    public T ViewModel
    {
        get { return Model; }
    }

    public IEnumerable<IBehaviorMarker> Behaviors
    {
        get { return behaviors; }
    }
}

NOTE: I updated this class since the original post. I removed constructors overrides that pass in behaviors ad htlmPrefix. You don’t need these unless you expect to further derive this class.

Configuration

Then apply a little configuration – either in the config file or in code. Refer to the Spark config documentation for details.

var settings = new SparkSettings()
    .SetPageBaseType("SparkModelViewPage")
    .AddAssembly("MvcContrib.FluentHtml")
    .AddNamespace("MvcContrib.FluentHtml")
    ...yadda yadda;
ViewEngines.Engines.Add(new SparkViewFactory(settings));

PageBaseType tells the Spark view engine to use your new class as the base class for all views.  The other two settings tell the Spark view engine to use FluentHtml in views.

Usage

That’s it.  Then you can use FluentHtml in your views like so:

<viewdata model="MyApp.Models.Person"/>  

<%=this.TextBox(x => x.FirstName).Label("First Name") %>
<%=this.TextBox(x => x.LastName).Label("Last Name") %>

Conclusion

I should add one caveat. I have tested only the most naive scenarios, and I have not used Spark for any production work at all. Please comment on any issues you encounter in using FluentHtml with Spark.