How to render an ASP.NET MVC view as a string?

Question

I want to output two different views (one as a string that will be sent as an email), and the other the page displayed to a user.

Is this possible in ASP.NET MVC bet

Answer 1

I saw an implementation for MVC 3 and Razor from another website, it worked for me:

    public static string RazorRender(Controller context, string DefaultAction)
    {
        string Cache = string.Empty;
        System.Text.StringBuilder sb = new System.Text.StringBuilder();
        System.IO.TextWriter tw = new System.IO.StringWriter(sb); 

        RazorView view_ = new RazorView(context.ControllerContext, DefaultAction, null, false, null);
        view_.Render(new ViewContext(context.ControllerContext, view_, new ViewDataDictionary(), new TempDataDictionary(), tw), tw);

        Cache = sb.ToString(); 

        return Cache;

    } 

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

    public static class HtmlHelperExtensions
    {
        public static string RenderPartialToString(ControllerContext context, string partialViewName, ViewDataDictionary viewData, TempDataDictionary tempData)
        {
            ViewEngineResult result = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(context, partialViewName);

            if (result.View != null)
            {
                StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
                using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(sb))
                {
                    using (HtmlTextWriter output = new HtmlTextWriter(sw))
                    {
                        ViewContext viewContext = new ViewContext(context, result.View, viewData, tempData, output);
                        result.View.Render(viewContext, output);
                    }
                }
                return sb.ToString();
            } 

            return String.Empty;

        }

    }

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