Render MVC PartialView into SignalR response

Question

I would like to render a PartialView to an HTML string so I can return it to a SignalR ajax request.

Something like:

SignalR Hub (mySignal

Answer 1

Here, this is what I use in Controllers for ajax, I modified it a bit so it can be called from method instead of controller, method returnView renders your view and returns HTML string so you can insert it with JS/jQuery into your page when you recive it on client side:

  public static string RenderPartialToString(string view, object model, ControllerContext Context)
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(view))
            {
                view = Context.RouteData.GetRequiredString("action");
            }

            ViewDataDictionary ViewData = new ViewDataDictionary();

            TempDataDictionary TempData = new TempDataDictionary();

            ViewData.Model = model;

            using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter())
            {
                ViewEngineResult viewResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(Context, view);

                ViewContext viewContext = new ViewContext(Context, viewResult.View, ViewData, TempData, sw);

                viewResult.View.Render(viewContext, sw);

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

        //"Error" should be name of the partial view, I was just testing with partial error view
        //You can put whichever controller you want instead of HomeController it will be the same
        //You can pass model instead of null
        private string returnView()
        {
            var controller = new HomeController();
            controller.ControllerContext = new ControllerContext(HttpContext,new System.Web.Routing.RouteData(), controller);
            return RenderPartialToString("Error", null, new ControllerContext(controller.Request.RequestContext, controller));
        }

I didn't test it on a Hub but it should work.