I have run into a situation where I would
like to render a partial view to a string and then return it as part of a
JSON response like so:
return Json(new {
personHtml = RenderPartialViewToString("Person", person)
});
The ability to do something like this would open up a ton of amazing
possibilities, so I really scoured the internet looking for a solution.
Unfortunately, no one seems to have come up with a clean solution for
it, so I dug into the MVC code and came up one…and because I’m such a
nice guy, you get to copy it for free.
public abstract class MyBaseController : Controller {
protected string RenderPartialViewToString()
{
return RenderPartialViewToString(null, null);
}
protected string RenderPartialViewToString(string viewName)
{
return RenderPartialViewToString(viewName, null);
}
protected string RenderPartialViewToString(object model)
{
return RenderPartialViewToString(null, model);
}
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();
}
}
}
Now you can simply do this:
public class MyController : MyBaseController {
public ActionResult CreatePerson(Person p) {
return Json(new {
statusCode = 1,
statusMessage = "The person has been added!",
personHtml = RenderPartialViewToString("Person", p)
});
}
}
Also note that you can modify these functions to render a View (rather than a PartialView) with this small change:
ViewEngineResult viewResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(ControllerContext, viewName);
Enjoy!
My final implementation is:
/// <summary>
/// Renders the partial view to string.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="viewName">Name of the view.</param>
/// <param name="model">The model.</param>
/// <param name="controllerContext">The controller context.</param>
/// <param name="viewData">The view data.</param>
/// <param name="tempData">The temp data.</param>
/// <returns>Returns parsed view as string.</returns>
/// <remarks>
/// Used from page: http://craftycodeblog.com/2010/05/15/asp-net-mvc-render-partial-view-to-string/
/// </remarks>
public static string RenderPartialViewToString(string viewName, object model, ControllerContext controllerContext, ViewDataDictionary viewData, TempDataDictionary tempData)
{
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();
}
}
My code is based on :
http://craftycodeblog.com/2010/05/15/asp-net-mvc-render-partial-view-to-string
