In ASP.NET MVC, we can construct html from code using the TagBuilder class. The built-in html helpers uses the TagBuilder class to generate textboxes, checkboxes and other html stuff. Generating html from code is not flexible because every time we need to alter the html we have to go for recompilation.

We all know that, the built-in ValidationSummary html helper displays the validation errors as an unordered list but in some cases we need to customize the way in which the errors are being displayed, say as a table instead of list. The ValidationSummary method creates the list inside the code and we can't customize it. All we could do is create our own custom helper to display the errors as a table.

It would be nice if we could pass the html structure or template that controls the way in which the validation errors are being displayed to the user to the helper from the view and that's what the subject of this post.

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