How to render an ASP.NET MVC view as a string?
Here's what I came up with, and it's working for me. I added the following method(s) to my controller base class. (You can always make these static methods somewhere else that accept a controller as a parameter I suppose)
MVC2 .ascx style
protected string RenderViewToString<T>(string viewPath, T model) {
ViewData.Model = model;
using (var writer = new StringWriter()) {
var view = new WebFormView(ControllerContext, viewPath);
var vdd = new ViewDataDictionary<T>(model);
var viewCxt = new ViewContext(ControllerContext, view, vdd,
new TempDataDictionary(), writer);
viewCxt.View.Render(viewCxt, writer);
return writer.ToString();
}
}
Razor .cshtml style
public string RenderRazorViewToString(string viewName, object model)
{
ViewData.Model = model;
using (var sw = new StringWriter())
{
var viewResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(ControllerContext,
viewName);
var viewContext = new ViewContext(ControllerContext, viewResult.View,
ViewData, TempData, sw);
viewResult.View.Render(viewContext, sw);
viewResult.ViewEngine.ReleaseView(ControllerContext, viewResult.View);
return sw.GetStringBuilder().ToString();
}
}
Edit: added Razor code.
This answer is not on my way . This is originally from https://stackoverflow.com/a/2759898/2318354 but here I have show the way to use it with "Static" Keyword to make it common for all Controllers .
For that you have to make static
class in class file . (Suppose your Class File Name is Utils.cs )
This example is For Razor.
Utils.cs
public static class RazorViewToString
{
public static string RenderRazorViewToString(this Controller controller, string viewName, object model)
{
controller.ViewData.Model = model;
using (var sw = new StringWriter())
{
var viewResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(controller.ControllerContext, viewName);
var viewContext = new ViewContext(controller.ControllerContext, viewResult.View, controller.ViewData, controller.TempData, sw);
viewResult.View.Render(viewContext, sw);
viewResult.ViewEngine.ReleaseView(controller.ControllerContext, viewResult.View);
return sw.GetStringBuilder().ToString();
}
}
}
Now you can call this class from your controller by adding NameSpace in your Controller File as following way by passing "this" as parameter to Controller.
string result = RazorViewToString.RenderRazorViewToString(this ,"ViewName", model);
As suggestion given by @Sergey this extension method can also call from cotroller as given below
string result = this.RenderRazorViewToString("ViewName", model);
I hope this will be useful to you make code clean and neat.
This works for me:
public virtual string RenderView(ViewContext viewContext)
{
var response = viewContext.HttpContext.Response;
response.Flush();
var oldFilter = response.Filter;
Stream filter = null;
try
{
filter = new MemoryStream();
response.Filter = filter;
viewContext.View.Render(viewContext, viewContext.HttpContext.Response.Output);
response.Flush();
filter.Position = 0;
var reader = new StreamReader(filter, response.ContentEncoding);
return reader.ReadToEnd();
}
finally
{
if (filter != null)
{
filter.Dispose();
}
response.Filter = oldFilter;
}
}