Checking if a general link is empty within a partial view

Question

I can display a link from a field but I only want to display the link if it's been filled out by the user. I tried surrounding by a conditional statement and checking for the field being null, but even when I don't have the field populated it comes back as true. Here's the code:

@using Sitecore.Mvc
@using Sitecore.Mvc.Presentation

@model Sitecore.Data.Items.Item
@if (Html.Sitecore().Field("External Link", Model) != null)
        {
            @Html.Sitecore().Field("External Link", Model, new { text = @Html.Sitecore().Field("Title", Model) })

        }

Answer 1

I don't remember the details, but it looks like Html.Sitecore().Field() returns HTML, which is not what you want to test. Get the actual Item and test item.Fields[ "External Link" ] or item[ "External Link" ]; as Dan Sinclair says, the latter will never actually be null.

Answer 2

Sitecore won't return null when you get a field value. Instead, check for an empty string:

@if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Html.Sitecore().Field("External Link", Model)))
{
    @Html.Sitecore().Field("External Link", Model, new { text = @Html.Sitecore().Field("Title", Model) })
}