ASP.NET MVC 2 has built-in support for the following strongly-typed HTML helpers:

HTML Element Helpers:

Html.TextBoxFor()

Html.TextAreaFor()

Html.DropDownListFor()

Html.CheckboxFor()

Html.RadioButtonFor()

Html.ListBoxFor()

Html.PasswordFor()

Html.HiddenFor()

Html.LabelFor()

Other Helpers:

Html.EditorFor()

Html.DisplayFor()

Html.DisplayTextFor()

Html.ValidationMessageFor()

I’ll be covering the new Html.EditorFor() and Html.DisplayFor() helper methods in a later blog post in this series when I cover the improved auto-scaffold functionality in ASP.NET MVC 2.  We’ll also be using the Html.ValidationMessageFor() helper in my next blog post in this series which covers the improved validation support within ASP.NET MVC 2.

Strongly-Typed HTML Helpers within Scaffolding

VS 2008 and VS 2010 both by default now use the new strongly-typed HTML helpers when “scaffolding” new strongly-typed view tempates using the “Add View” command. 

For example, let’s assume we had a simple “ProductsController” class like below that has an “Edit” action method that renders an edit form for a “Product” model class:

Figure 6

We can right-click within the Edit action method using Visual Studio and choose the “Add View” context menu command to create a view template.  We’ll choose to create an “Edit” template that is scaffolded using a Product object:

Figure 7

With ASP.NET MVC 2, the view template that is created by default now uses the new strongly typed HTML helper methods to reference the Product model object:

Figure 8