How to use dashes in HTML-5 data-* attributes in ASP.NET MVC

Update: MVC 3 and newer versions have built-in support for this. See JohnnyO's highly upvoted answer below for recommended solutions.

I do not think there are any immediate helpers for achieving this, but I do have two ideas for you to try:

// 1: pass dictionary instead of anonymous object
<%= Html.ActionLink( "back", "Search",
    new { keyword = Model.Keyword, page = Model.currPage - 1},
    new Dictionary<string,Object> { {"class","prev"}, {"data-details","yada"} } )%>

// 2: pass custom type decorated with descriptor attributes
public class CustomArgs
{
    public CustomArgs( string className, string dataDetails ) { ... }

    [DisplayName("class")]
    public string Class { get; set; }
    [DisplayName("data-details")]
    public string DataDetails { get; set; }
}

<%= Html.ActionLink( "back", "Search",
    new { keyword = Model.Keyword, page = Model.currPage - 1},
    new CustomArgs( "prev", "yada" ) )%>

Just ideas, haven't tested it.

This problem has been addressed in ASP.Net MVC 3. They now automatically convert underscores in html attribute properties to dashes. They got lucky on this one, as underscores are not legal in html attributes, so MVC can confidently imply that you'd like a dash when you use an underscore.

For example:

@Html.TextBoxFor(vm => vm.City, new { data_bind = "foo" })

will render this in MVC 3:

<input data-bind="foo" id="City" name="City" type="text" value="" />

If you're still using an older version of MVC, you can mimic what MVC 3 is doing by creating this static method that I borrowed from MVC3's source code:

public class Foo {
    public static RouteValueDictionary AnonymousObjectToHtmlAttributes(object htmlAttributes) {
        RouteValueDictionary result = new RouteValueDictionary();
        if (htmlAttributes != null) {
            foreach (System.ComponentModel.PropertyDescriptor property in System.ComponentModel.TypeDescriptor.GetProperties(htmlAttributes)) {
                result.Add(property.Name.Replace('_', '-'), property.GetValue(htmlAttributes));
            }
        }
        return result;
    }
}

And then you can use it like this:

<%: Html.TextBoxFor(vm => vm.City, Foo.AnonymousObjectToHtmlAttributes(new { data_bind = "foo" })) %>

and this will render the correct data-* attribute:

<input data-bind="foo" id="City" name="City" type="text" value="" />