ASP.NET MVC Extension Method for the ID in the Route

If you’ve worked on an ASP.NET MVC site, you may have had to reference the ID in the current route.  In a Razor view you can reference it via the following variable:

@Url.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["id"]

You may use this a lot if you have a lot of inter-action navigation. Why not throw it into an extension method!?

This makes the assumption that you’re using the default route, or a similar one with an “id” parameter:

namespace System.Web.Mvc
{
    public static class ContextExtensions
    {
        public static string Id(this HtmlHelper helper)
        {
            return helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["id"].ToString();
        }
    }
}

Now you can reference the id much easier like this:

@Html.Id()

And if you ever need to change it, you can update it in one place!