if else nested within a foreach

Article
2014-05-02

Question

_{Friday, May 2, 2014 9:59 AM}

Hi,

I'm just starting out with ASP.NET Web Pages having been developing in Classic ASP for the past 11 years (I know, long overdue :-))

For a test project I'm converting a simple Classic ASP CMS site to ASP.NET Web Pages using Webmatrix.

I need to create a "foreach" loop to create a primary menu/navigation drawn from a MySQL database - which I've done and it all works fine. However I now need to add some conditional logic within the loop and I'm having problems and getting this compliation error:

**Compiler Error Message: **CS1513: } expected

Here is my code:

<div id="menuprimary">
  <ul>     
    @foreach(var row in db.Query(primarymenu)){

    menupgId = @row.pgId;
    menutitle = @row.pgMenuTitle;
    menulinktitle = @row.pgLinkName;
 
    if(Convert.ToInt32(Request.QueryString["pgId"]) == menupgId) {
    activeclass = " style=\"color:#6d6d6d;\""; 
    }
    else {
    activeclass = "";
      }
 
    if(menupgId) == 1 {
      lnkstr = siteurl;
      }
    else {
      lnkstr = siteurl + (menupgId) + "/" + (menulinktitle) + "/";
      }
 
        
    <li><a href="@lnkstr"@Html.Raw(activeclass)>@menutitle</a></li>
    }       
  </ul>
</div>

The loop gets the rows from the database (earlier in the code) and on each loop assigns the values to various variables (that bit is all ok). Then there is a bit of conditional logic that checks whether the querystring "pgId" value is the same this iteration/loop value for pgId (menupgId) - if it is then it writes a values (some style code) to a variable "activeclass" - this is then used later when creating the html navigation so that the "active" page menu/navigaiton link is styled/coloured different to the other links.

Then there is another if/else statement to check whether this is the "home" page of the site (pgId = 1) or another (internal) page - if it is the home page (menupgId = 1) then the url for this link will just be the "siteurl" (variable set earlier on in the code which is the site url/domain name) - if it is any other page the variable lnkstr is constructed making up a SEO friendly URL - siteurl + menupgId + / + menutitle + / + (i.e. http://www.mydomain.com/2/contact-us/)

If I run the page without the if/else statements it works - if I run it with the if/else statements I get the error about } expected.

I've tried various searches but each answer dealt with writing blocks of html within each if/else whereas I want to assign a value to a variable in each statement so the solutions I've found don't seem to work for me.

I'm stumped, can anyone help me please?

Regards
AP

All replies (4)

_{Friday, May 2, 2014 10:08 AM ✅Answered}

scimitar

<div id="menuprimary">
    <ul>
        @foreach(var row in db.Query(primarymenu)) {
        menupgId = @row.pgId;
        menutitle = @row.pgMenuTitle;
        menulinktitle = @row.pgLinkName;

            if(Convert.ToInt32(Request.QueryString["pgId"]) == menupgId) {
                activeclass = " style=\"color:#6d6d6d;\"";
            }
            else {
                activeclass = "";
            }

            if(menupgId) == 1 {
                lnkstr = siteurl;
            }
            else {
                lnkstr = siteurl + (menupgId) + "/" + (menulinktitle) + "/";
            }

            <li><a href="@lnkstr" @Html.Raw(activeclass)>@menutitle</a></li>
        }
    </ul>
</div>

I reformatted your code a bit to make it easier to verify that all your braces were closed. The issue is that you have unnecessary @ symbols here, which are preventing the compiler from parsing your file correctly:

menupgId = @row.pgId;
menutitle = @row.pgMenuTitle;
menulinktitle = @row.pgLinkName;

If you're assigning things into C# variables, you're already inside Razor syntax, and don't need to use the @ symbol.

If you're using Visual Studio (Definitely 2013 Express for Web, probably most versions since 2012 at least), any @ that distinguishes Razor C# from HTML gets highlighted in yellow by the editor, so it makes it pretty obvious if it's having the intended effect.

EDIT: You're going to have another problem with one of your if statements once you fix that:

if(menupgId) == 1

Should be

if(menupgId == 1)

_{Friday, May 2, 2014 10:19 AM}

Hi,

Thanks for the speedy reply.

I removed the @ symbol from the row. for the looping variables, like this:

menupgId = row.pgId;
menutitle = row.pgMenuTitle;
menulinktitle = row.pgLinkName;

But I still get a compliation error like this:

Server Error in '/' Application.

Parser Error

**Description: **An error occurred during the parsing of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific parse error details and modify your source file appropriately.

**Parser Error Message: **Expected a "{" but found a "==". Block statements must be enclosed in "{" and "}". You cannot use single-statement control-flow statements in CSHTML pages. For example, the following is not allowed:

@if(isLoggedIn)
<p>Hello, @user\</p>

Instead, wrap the contents of the block in "{}":

@if(isLoggedIn) {
<p>Hello, @user\</p>
}

Source Error:

Line 89:       }
Line 90: 
Line 91:     if(menupgId) == 1 {
Line 92:       lnkstr = siteurl;
Line 93:       }

**Source File: /index.cshtml Line: **91

Not sure what to do now.

Thanks again.

_{Friday, May 2, 2014 10:26 AM}

Looks like you were replying as I was editing my first post to cover this. Conditions for if statements must be completely enclosed in parentheses - see my edit.

_{Friday, May 2, 2014 10:52 AM}

ahhh,

thanks for that - parentheses now enclosing the condition and all is working.

Many thanks for your speedy help.

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