Get DisplayName Attribute without using LabelFor Helper in asp.net MVC

What is the best way to retrieve the display name attribute for an item in your model? I see a lot of people using the LabelFor helper for everything, but a label isn’t appropriate if I just want to list the data out. Is there an easy way just get the Name Attribute if I just want to print it out in, say a paragraph?

Answers:

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Method 1

<p>
    <%= Html.Encode(
        ModelMetadata.FromLambdaExpression<YourViewModel, string>(
            x => x.SomeProperty, ViewData).DisplayName
    ) %>
<p>

Obviously in order to avoid the spaghetti code it is always a good idea to write a helper:

public static class HtmlExtensions
{
    public static MvcHtmlString GetDisplayName<TModel, TProperty>(
        this HtmlHelper<TModel> htmlHelper, 
        Expression<Func<TModel, TProperty>> expression
    )
    {
        var metaData = ModelMetadata.FromLambdaExpression<TModel, TProperty>(expression, htmlHelper.ViewData);
        string value = metaData.DisplayName ?? (metaData.PropertyName ?? ExpressionHelper.GetExpressionText(expression));
        return MvcHtmlString.Create(value);
    }
}

And then:

<p>
    <%: Html.GetDisplayName(x => x.SomeProperty) %>
</p>

Method 2

You should try new existing function :

<% Html.DisplayNameFor(m => m.YourProperty) %>

Method 3

In my opinion you should use a string as a result type because otherwise you skip the encoding mechanism. Another point is that you need the DisplayName in some cases as a string (i.e. populate the columns in a WebGrid class).

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