Putting HTML inside Html.ActionLink(), plus No Link Text?

I have two questions:

1. I'm wondering how I can display no link text when using Html.ActionLink() in an MVC view (actually, this is Site.Master).

There is not an overloaded version that does not allow link text, and when I try passing in just a blank string, the compiler tells me it needs a non-empty string.

How can I fix this?

2. I need to put <span> tags within the anchor tag, but it's not working with Html.ActionLink();. I'd like to see the following output:

   Span text

How can I put tags inside of the anchor tag in ASP.NET MVC?

Instead of using Html.ActionLink you can render a url via Url.Action

<a href="<%= Url.Action("Index", "Home") %>"><span>Text</span></a>
<a href="@Url.Action("Index", "Home")"><span>Text</span></a>

And to do a blank url you could have

<a href="<%= Url.Action("Index", "Home") %>"></a>
<a href="@Url.Action("Index", "Home")"></a>

A custom HtmlHelper extension is another option. Note: ParameterDictionary is my own type. You could substitute a RouteValueDictionary but you'd have to construct it differently.

public static string ActionLinkSpan( this HtmlHelper helper, string linkText, string actionName, string controllerName, object htmlAttributes )
{
    TagBuilder spanBuilder = new TagBuilder( "span" );
    spanBuilder.InnerHtml = linkText;

    return BuildNestedAnchor( spanBuilder.ToString(), string.Format( "/{0}/{1}", controllerName, actionName ), htmlAttributes );
}

private static string BuildNestedAnchor( string innerHtml, string url, object htmlAttributes )
{
    TagBuilder anchorBuilder = new TagBuilder( "a" );
    anchorBuilder.Attributes.Add( "href", url );
    anchorBuilder.MergeAttributes( new ParameterDictionary( htmlAttributes ) );
    anchorBuilder.InnerHtml = innerHtml;

    return anchorBuilder.ToString();
}

Here is (low and dirty) workaround in case you need to use ajax or some feature which you cannot use when making link manually (using tag):

<%= Html.ActionLink("LinkTextToken", "ActionName", "ControllerName").ToHtmlString().Replace("LinkTextToken", "Refresh <span class='large sprite refresh'></span>")%>

You can use any text instead of 'LinkTextToken', it is there only to be replaced, it is only important that it does not occur anywhere else inside actionlink.

Just use Url.Action instead of Html.ActionLink:

<li id="home_nav"><a href="<%= Url.Action("ActionName") %>"><span>Span text</span></a></li>

This has always worked well for me. It's not messy and very clean.

<a href="@Url.Action("Index", "Home")"><span>Text</span></a>