An interactive website requires interactive components in it for target audience to interact in a more user-friendly way. Getting long rich content kind of text from the target audience adds a responsibility towards the Website to do half of the work for the user e.g. auto spell checker, allowing the user to place inline images or the links, and content indentation etc. These features can be provided individually, but, it will become more cumbersome for the website developers to develop each and every single feature from scratch. In regards to such matter, many amazing affordable rich text editor plugins are available for the commercial use.
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Today, I shall be demonstrating how to integrate a rich text editor into
ASP.NET MVC5 environment. I will be using
Summernote Rich Text (WYSIWYG) Editor. This particular plugin is simple to use and the best part I like about it is that it allows the inline images, which so far, I am at least unable to find free of cost, simple to use and with working inline image media in different plugins.
The prerequisites include the knowledge about the technologies given below.
- ASP.NET MVC 5
- HTML
- JavaScript
- Bootstrap
- jQuery
- C# Programming
You can download the complete source code for this tutorial or you can follow the step by step discussion given below. The sample code is being developed in Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise.
Now, let's begin.
- Create new MVC Web project, name it "RichTextEditor".
- Now, open "HomeController.cs" file and replace the code given below in it i.e.
- using System;
- using System.Collections.Generic;
- using System.Linq;
- using System.Web;
- using System.Web.Mvc;
- namespace RichTextEditor.Controllers {
- public class HomeController: Controller {
- public ActionResult Index() {
- return View();
- }
- }
- }
- In "Model" folder, create "RichTextEditorViewModel.cs" file and place the code given below in it i.e.
- using System.Collections.Generic;
- using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;
- using Microsoft.AspNet.Identity;
- using Microsoft.Owin.Security;
- using System.Web.Mvc;
- namespace RichTextEditor.Models {
- public class RichTextEditorViewModel {
- [AllowHtml]
- [Display(Name = "Message")]
- public string Message {
- get;
- set;
- }
- }
- }
- Open ''Shared->_Layout.cshtml" file and replace it with the code i.e.
- <!DOCTYPE html>
- <html>
-
- <head>
- <meta charset="utf-8" />
- <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
- <title>@ViewBag.Title</title> @Styles.Render("~/Content/css") @Scripts.Render("~/bundles/modernizr")
- <!-- Font Awesome -->
- <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com/font-awesome/4.4.0/css/font-awesome.min.css" /> </head>
-
- <body>
- <div class="navbar navbar-inverse navbar-fixed-top">
- <div class="container">
- <div class="navbar-header"> <button type="button" class="navbar-toggle" data-toggle="collapse" data-target=".navbar-collapse">
- <span class="icon-bar"></span>
- <span class="icon-bar"></span>
- <span class="icon-bar"></span>
- </button> </div>
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="container body-content"> @RenderBody()
- <hr />
- <footer>
- <center>
- <p><strong>Copyright © @DateTime.Now.Year - <a href="http://www.asmak9.com/">Asma's Blog</a>.</strong> All rights reserved.</p>
- </center>
- </footer>
- </div> @Scripts.Render("~/bundles/jquery") @Scripts.Render("~/bundles/bootstrap") @RenderSection("scripts", required: false) </body>
-
- </html>
- Open ''Home->Index.cshtml" file and replace it with the code given below i.e.
- @using RichTextEditor.Models
- @model RichTextEditorViewModel
- @ {
- ViewBag.Title = "ASP.NET MVC5: Rich Text Editor Plugin";
- } < h2 > @ViewBag.Title. < /h2> < div class = "row" > < div class = "col-md-12" > < section id = "loginForm" > @using(Html.BeginForm("Index", "Home", new {
- ReturnUrl = ViewBag.ReturnUrl
- }, FormMethod.Post, new {
- @class = "form-horizontal", role = "form"
- })) {
- @Html.AntiForgeryToken() < h5 > < i class = "fa fa-link"
- aria - hidden = "true" > < /i> < a href = "http://summernote.org/" > Summernote Rich Text WYSIWYG Editor < /a> < /h5> < hr / > < div class = "form-group" > < label class = "col-md-4 control-label" > Message < /label> < div class = "col-md-8" > < div class = "input-group" > @Html.TextAreaFor(m => m.Message, new {
- rows = "20", style = "resize:none;width:400px;", placeholder = Html.DisplayNameFor(m => m.Message), @class = "form-control input-lg textarea-editor"
- }) < /div> < /div> < /div>
- @ * < div class = "form-group" > < div class = "col-md-offset-2 col-md-10" > < input type = "submit"
- value = "Log in"
- class = "btn btn-default" / > < /div> < /div>*@
- } < /section> < /div> < /div>
- @section Scripts { < script type = "text/javascript"
- src = "http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/summernote/0.8.2/summernote.js" > < /script>
- @Scripts.Render("~/bundles/Script-custom-editor") < link href = "http://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/summernote/0.8.2/summernote.css"
- rel = "stylesheet" >
- }
- In "Scripts" folder, create a new file and name it "script-custom-editor.js". Place the code given below into this JavaScript file.
- $(document).ready(function() {
-
- $('.textarea-editor').summernote({
- height: 300,
- minHeight: null,
- maxHeight: null,
- focus: true
- });
- });
- Now, execute the project.
Conclusion
In this article, you have learned about the importance, usage, and advantages of rich text editor. You also learned about using Summernote Rich Text (WYSIWYG) Editor plugin with ASP.NET MVC5.