MVC Html.ActionLinks Explained for Beginners

Html.ActionLink should be simple but sometimes they are confusing to beginners.  There are 3 ways to call @Html.ActionLink:

1. If you are already on a page within a controller you can use the shortest one which is only the caption and the action.
   
   eg. @Html.ActionLink("Click Here", "MyActionName")
   
2. If you are referencing another controller or you want to include attributes on the link such as the css class
   
   eg.
   
   @Html.ActionLink("Click Here", "Index", "Home", null)
   
   @Html.ActionLink("Click Here", "Index", "Home", new { @class = "myHrefClass" })
   
3. If you need to pass parameters to your action then you need to use the full version.
   
   IMPORTANT: If you are NOT Specifying a class, you still need to pass NULL or it will assume that the parameters you are passing are actually the attributes like in the version in the section way above.
   eg.
   
   @Html.ActionLink("Click Here", "Index","Home", new { paramName = value, param2Name = value}, null)
   
   @Html.ActionLink("Click Here", "Index","Home", new { paramName = value, param2Name = value}, new { @class = "myHrefClass" })

I hope this clears up how ActionLink calls work.  If you have any questions feel free to email me at chris.williams@readwatchcreate.com