Chapter 21B. Display Templates in MVC
Display templates are templated helpers that enable you to build a user interface based on your data model. In this lesson I show you how to use display templates to display the data in your model.
Here are the three helper methods in the DisplayExtensions class:
Display() — This helper returns HTML markup for a particular property in the model where the property is identified via a string expression.
DisplayFor() — This helper also returns HTML markup for a particular property in the model. However, with this helper, the property is identified via a strongly-typed expression.
DisplayForModel() — This helper returns HTML markup for all of the simple properties in the model.
Note
The expression
DisplayFor(model => model)is equivalent toDisplayForModel().
THE DISPLAYFORMODEL HELPER
Figure 21B-1 shows the Entity Data Model (EDM) that I use in this lesson.

Figure 21B.1. FIGURE 21B-1
This is the Details action method:
//
// GET: /Task/Details/5
public ActionResult Details(int id = 1)
{
var task = (from t in _entity.Tasks
where t.Id == id
select t).FirstOrDefault();
return View(task);
}In the preceding action method I have set the default value of the id parameter to 1. This is the View that uses the DisplayForModel helper:
<%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<Lesson21b.Models.Task>" %> ...