@Html.Action in Asp.Net Core

Update: As of 2.2.2 HttpContextAccessor keep the context in an object (supposedly to prevent inter request mix up) and it impacts the current solution... So you need to provide the following implementation for IHttpContextAccessor (an old version) and register it as a singleton:

public class HttpContextAccessor : IHttpContextAccessor
{
    private static AsyncLocal<HttpContext> _httpContextCurrent = new AsyncLocal<HttpContext>();
    HttpContext IHttpContextAccessor.HttpContext { get => _httpContextCurrent.Value; set => _httpContextCurrent.Value = value; }
}

---

For asp.net core 2

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Html;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Infrastructure;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Routing;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Rendering
{
    public static class HtmlHelperViewExtensions
    {
        public static IHtmlContent Action(this IHtmlHelper helper, string action, object parameters = null)
        {
            var controller = (string)helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["controller"];

            return Action(helper, action, controller, parameters);
        }

        public static IHtmlContent Action(this IHtmlHelper helper, string action, string controller, object parameters = null)
        {
            var area = (string)helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Values["area"];

            return Action(helper, action, controller, area, parameters);
        }

        public static IHtmlContent Action(this IHtmlHelper helper, string action, string controller, string area, object parameters = null)
        {
            if (action == null)
                throw new ArgumentNullException("action");

            if (controller == null)
                throw new ArgumentNullException("controller");


            var task = RenderActionAsync(helper, action, controller, area, parameters);

            return task.Result;
        }

        private static async Task<IHtmlContent> RenderActionAsync(this IHtmlHelper helper, string action, string controller, string area, object parameters = null)
        {
            // fetching required services for invocation
            var serviceProvider = helper.ViewContext.HttpContext.RequestServices;
            var actionContextAccessor = helper.ViewContext.HttpContext.RequestServices.GetRequiredService<IActionContextAccessor>();
            var httpContextAccessor = helper.ViewContext.HttpContext.RequestServices.GetRequiredService<IHttpContextAccessor>();
            var actionSelector = serviceProvider.GetRequiredService<IActionSelector>();

            // creating new action invocation context
            var routeData = new RouteData();
            foreach (var router in helper.ViewContext.RouteData.Routers)
            {
                routeData.PushState(router, null, null);
            }
            routeData.PushState(null, new RouteValueDictionary(new { controller = controller, action = action, area = area }), null);
            routeData.PushState(null, new RouteValueDictionary(parameters ?? new { }), null);

            //get the actiondescriptor
            RouteContext routeContext = new RouteContext(helper.ViewContext.HttpContext) { RouteData = routeData };
            var candidates = actionSelector.SelectCandidates(routeContext);
            var actionDescriptor = actionSelector.SelectBestCandidate(routeContext, candidates);

            var originalActionContext = actionContextAccessor.ActionContext;
            var originalhttpContext = httpContextAccessor.HttpContext;
            try
            {
                var newHttpContext = serviceProvider.GetRequiredService<IHttpContextFactory>().Create(helper.ViewContext.HttpContext.Features);
                if (newHttpContext.Items.ContainsKey(typeof(IUrlHelper)))
                {
                    newHttpContext.Items.Remove(typeof(IUrlHelper));
                }
                newHttpContext.Response.Body = new MemoryStream();
                var actionContext = new ActionContext(newHttpContext, routeData, actionDescriptor);
                actionContextAccessor.ActionContext = actionContext;
                var invoker = serviceProvider.GetRequiredService<IActionInvokerFactory>().CreateInvoker(actionContext);
                await invoker.InvokeAsync();
                newHttpContext.Response.Body.Position = 0;
                using (var reader = new StreamReader(newHttpContext.Response.Body))
                {
                    return new HtmlString(reader.ReadToEnd());
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                return new HtmlString(ex.Message);
            }
            finally
            {
                actionContextAccessor.ActionContext = originalActionContext;
                httpContextAccessor.HttpContext = originalhttpContext;
                if (helper.ViewContext.HttpContext.Items.ContainsKey(typeof(IUrlHelper)))
                {
                    helper.ViewContext.HttpContext.Items.Remove(typeof(IUrlHelper));
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

It is based on Aries response. I corrected what wasn't compiling for 2.0 and I added a couple of tweaks. There are 2 glorified static values for the current httpcontext and the current actioncontext. The one for httpcontext is set in IHttpContextFactory.Create and I set the one for actioncontext in the code. Note that depending on the features you use IActionContextAccessor and IHttpContextAccessor may not be registered by default, so you may need to add them in your startup:

services.AddSingleton<IActionContextAccessor, ActionContextAccessor>(); services.AddSingleton<IHttpContextAccessor, HttpContextAccessor>();

HttpContext is just a wrapper around HttpContext.Features, so if you change something in one, it also changes in the other... I reset what I know about in the finally of the try/catch.

I removed the IUrlHelper from the Items cache since this value will be reused even if the actionContext to build the urlHelper is different(IUrlHelperFactory.GetUrlHelper).

Asp.net core 2.0 assumes you won't do this, there is a good chance there are other cached things, so I recommend to be careful when using this and just don't if you don't need to.

Yes, ViewComponents would be the new way of doing this, but they are not exactly the same as what @Html.Action was doing before though...for example, in MVC5 and prior, invoking 'child actions' would also execute any filters (for example, if the controller had filters decorated on them) giving them the appearance as regular actions...but this is not true with ViewComponents and they are executed in the context of actual request...

More info on view components: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/mvc/views/view-components