How to get a response "stream" from an action in MVC3/Razor?

Question

I am using MVC3, .NET4, C#.

I need to create some XHTML using a Razor View. I do this via an Action.

    public ActionResult RenderDoc(int ReportId)
    {
        //A new document is created.

        return View();
    }

I then need to take the output from this and convert it to a Word Doc. I am using a 3rd party component to do this and it expects a "stream" or a "file" for the XHTML source that is read in for conversion to a DOC, like the following:

document.Open(MyXhtmlStream,FormatType.Html,XHTMLValidationType.Transitional);

My Question:

What would be a good way to call the "RenderDoc" Action and obtain the result as a stream to feed into "MyXhtmlStream".

Many thanks.

EDIT: I have had another idea !!!

1) Render the View within the action to create a String(XHTMLString). I have seen a method to do this on SO.

2) Create a MemoryStream and put this string into it.

Stream MyStream = New MemoryStream("XHTMLString and encoding method");

EDIT2: Based on Darin's answer

I need to clasyify a little further, and I hope to do this via tweaking Darin's code for my purpose.

 public class XmlDocumentResult : ActionResult
 {
  private readonly string strXhtmlDocument;
  public XmlDocumentResult(string strXhtmlDocument)
  {
    this.strXhtmlDocument = strXhtmlDocument;
  }

  public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
  {
    WordDocument myWordDocument = new WordDocument();
    var response = context.HttpContext.Response;
    response.ContentType = "text/xml";
    myWordDocument.Open(response.OutputStream, FormatType.Html, XHTMLValidationType.Transitional);
  }
 }

The above is closer to what I need. Note the 3rd Party WordDocument type. So there is still the issue of how I get the "strXhtmlDocument" into the "Response.OutputStream?

Answer 1

I would just write a custom ActionResult to handle that:

public class XmlDocumentResult : ActionResult
{
    private readonly Document document;
    public XmlDocumentResult(Document document)
    {
        this.document = document;
    }

    public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
    {
        var response = context.HttpContext.Response;
        response.ContentType = "text/xml";
        document.Open(response.OutputStream, FormatType.Html, XHTMLValidationType.Transitional);
    }
}

You could of course adjust the response Content-Type if necessary and also append a Content-Disposition header if you want.

And then simply have my controller action return this custom action result:

public ActionResult RenderDoc(int reportId)
{
    Document document = repository.GetDocument(reportId);
    return new XmlDocumentResult(document);
}

Now the controller action doesn't need to handle plumbing code anymore. The controller action does what a typical controller action is supposed to do:

1. Query the Model
2. Pass this model to an ActionResult

In your case the model is this Document class or whatever it is called.