Migrating @Html.Label from ASP.NET MVC 5 to ASP.NET Core 7.0

Question

I am migrating an ASP.NET MVC 5 application to ASP.NET Core 7.0.

After migration, I get now a compiler error with the following code:

@Html.Label("My Label", new { @class = "mt-4 mb-2" })

I am using a lot of @Html.Label in my code, it seems that there is a new parameter introduced for this helper in .NET Core:

IHtmlContent Label(string expression, string labelText, object htmlAttributes);

Seems there is no overload anymore which accepts only two parameters like in ASP.NET MVC 5 (labelText + htmlAttributes).

I suppose I have to update all of them with an "expression" parameter, or is there another solution?

Answer 1

I will always recommend using Label Tag Helper. You can use that like the following.

<label asp-for="My Label"></label>

That is easiest part of doing that.

Answer 2

You may try to create your own static extension method that will copy signature of old Label method

public static class HtmlExtensions 
{
    public static IHtmlContent Label(this IHtmlHelper helper, string expression, object htmlAttributes = null)
    {
        return helper.Label(expression, expression, htmlAttributes);
    }
}

Answer 3

I suppose I have to update all of them with an "expression" parameter, or is there another solution?

Another solution : You can create HTML Helpers with Extension Methods like:

LabelExtensions:

public static class LabelExtensions
 {
     public static Microsoft.AspNetCore.Html.IHtmlContent Label(this Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Rendering.IHtmlHelper htmlHelper, string labelText, object htmlAttributes)
     {
         var str = String.Format("<label for='{0}'>{1}</label>", htmlAttributes, labelText);
         return new HtmlString(str);

     }
 }

After you create an extension method, and build your application successfully, the extension method appears in Visual Studio Intellisense like all of the other methods of a class .

result:

Answer 4

There seems to be multiple solutions to fix this Problem, in this scenario the cleaner solution would be to use directly a label:

<label></label>

But as a quick fix, with minor code changes, I managed to pass string.empty("") as a parameter:

@Html.Label("", "My Label", new { @class = "mt-4 mb-2" })

This will render the label, but because of the empty first parameter, we get this for generated:

As a conclusion, I would use the <label> tag directly for new code in such cases, and @Html.Label should be used only if there is an expression to bind to.

Probably in ASP.NET Core that overload was removed for exactly this reason.