C# – ASP.NET MVC Razor: How to render a Razor Partial View’s HTML inside the controller action

asp.net-mvccrazor

How to generate a HTML of a given partial view on ASP.NET view engine is known.

But if this functionality is used on razor partial view it does not work, as exception says the partial view does not derive from "UserControl".

How to fix the rendering to support razor partial view?

I need this because I generate emails form this partial views …

UPDATE:

Code that fails (@mcl):

public string RenderPartialToString(string controlName, object viewData)
    {
        ViewPage viewPage = new ViewPage() { ViewContext = new ViewContext() };
        viewPage.Url = this.GetUrlHelper();

        string fullControlName = "~/Views/Email/" + controlName + ".ascx";

        viewPage.ViewData = new ViewDataDictionary(viewData);
        viewPage.Controls.Add(viewPage.LoadControl(fullControlName));

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(sb))
        {
            using (HtmlTextWriter tw = new HtmlTextWriter(sw))
            {
                viewPage.RenderControl(tw);
            }
        }
        return sb.ToString();
    }

Best Answer

@Html.Partial("nameOfPartial", Model)

Update

protected string RenderPartialViewToString(string viewName, object model)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(viewName))
        viewName = ControllerContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("action");

    ViewData.Model = model;

    using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter()) {
        ViewEngineResult viewResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(ControllerContext, viewName);
        ViewContext viewContext = new ViewContext(ControllerContext, viewResult.View, ViewData, TempData, sw);
        viewResult.View.Render(viewContext, sw);

        return sw.GetStringBuilder().ToString();
    }
}

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Can an ASP.NET MVC controller return an Image

Use the base controllers File method.

public ActionResult Image(string id)
{
    var dir = Server.MapPath("/Images");
    var path = Path.Combine(dir, id + ".jpg"); //validate the path for security or use other means to generate the path.
    return base.File(path, "image/jpeg");
}

As a note, this seems to be fairly efficient. I did a test where I requested the image through the controller (http://localhost/MyController/Image/MyImage) and through the direct URL (http://localhost/Images/MyImage.jpg) and the results were:

MVC: 7.6 milliseconds per photo
Direct: 6.7 milliseconds per photo

Note: this is the average time of a request. The average was calculated by making thousands of requests on the local machine, so the totals should not include network latency or bandwidth issues.

Json – ASP.NET MVC controller actions that return JSON or partial html

In your action method, return Json(object) to return JSON to your page.

public ActionResult SomeActionMethod() {
  return Json(new {foo="bar", baz="Blech"});
}

Then just call the action method using Ajax. You could use one of the helper methods from the ViewPage such as

<%= Ajax.ActionLink("SomeActionMethod", new AjaxOptions {OnSuccess="somemethod"}) %>

SomeMethod would be a javascript method that then evaluates the Json object returned.

If you want to return a plain string, you can just use the ContentResult:

public ActionResult SomeActionMethod() {
    return Content("hello world!");
}

ContentResult by default returns a text/plain as its contentType.
This is overloadable so you can also do:

return Content("<xml>This is poorly formatted xml.</xml>", "text/xml");

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Asp.net-mvc – Can an ASP.NET MVC controller return an Image

Json – ASP.NET MVC controller actions that return JSON or partial html

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