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

Question

Here's what I came up with, and it's working for me. I added the following method(s) to my controller base class. (You can always make these static methods somewhere else that accept a controller as a parameter I suppose)

MVC2 .ascx style

protected string RenderViewToString<T>(string viewPath, T model) {
  ViewData.Model = model;
  using (var writer = new StringWriter()) {
    var view = new WebFormView(ControllerContext, viewPath);
    var vdd = new ViewDataDictionary<T>(model);
    var viewCxt = new ViewContext(ControllerContext, view, vdd,
                                new TempDataDictionary(), writer);
    viewCxt.View.Render(viewCxt, writer);
    return writer.ToString();
  }
}

Razor .cshtml style

public 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);
    viewResult.ViewEngine.ReleaseView(ControllerContext, viewResult.View);
    return sw.GetStringBuilder().ToString();
  }
}

Edit: added Razor code.

This answer is not on my way . This is originally from https://stackoverflow.com/a/2759898/2318354 but here I have show the way to use it with "Static" Keyword to make it common for all Controllers .

For that you have to make static class in class file . (Suppose your Class File Name is Utils.cs )

This example is For Razor.

Utils.cs

public static class RazorViewToString
{
    public static string RenderRazorViewToString(this Controller controller, string viewName, object model)
    {
        controller.ViewData.Model = model;
        using (var sw = new StringWriter())
        {
            var viewResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(controller.ControllerContext, viewName);
            var viewContext = new ViewContext(controller.ControllerContext, viewResult.View, controller.ViewData, controller.TempData, sw);
            viewResult.View.Render(viewContext, sw);
            viewResult.ViewEngine.ReleaseView(controller.ControllerContext, viewResult.View);
            return sw.GetStringBuilder().ToString();
        }
    }
}

Now you can call this class from your controller by adding NameSpace in your Controller File as following way by passing "this" as parameter to Controller.

string result = RazorViewToString.RenderRazorViewToString(this ,"ViewName", model);

As suggestion given by @Sergey this extension method can also call from cotroller as given below

string result = this.RenderRazorViewToString("ViewName", model);

I hope this will be useful to you make code clean and neat.

This works for me:

public virtual string RenderView(ViewContext viewContext)
{
    var response = viewContext.HttpContext.Response;
    response.Flush();
    var oldFilter = response.Filter;
    Stream filter = null;
    try
    {
        filter = new MemoryStream();
        response.Filter = filter;
        viewContext.View.Render(viewContext, viewContext.HttpContext.Response.Output);
        response.Flush();
        filter.Position = 0;
        var reader = new StreamReader(filter, response.ContentEncoding);
        return reader.ReadToEnd();
    }
    finally
    {
        if (filter != null)
        {
            filter.Dispose();
        }
        response.Filter = oldFilter;
    }
}

I found a new solution that renders a view to string without having to mess with the Response stream of the current HttpContext (which doesn't allow you to change the response's ContentType or other headers).

Basically, all you do is create a fake HttpContext for the view to render itself:

/// <summary>Renders a view to string.</summary>
public static string RenderViewToString(this Controller controller,
                                        string viewName, object viewData) {
    //Create memory writer
    var sb = new StringBuilder();
    var memWriter = new StringWriter(sb);

    //Create fake http context to render the view
    var fakeResponse = new HttpResponse(memWriter);
    var fakeContext = new HttpContext(HttpContext.Current.Request, fakeResponse);
    var fakeControllerContext = new ControllerContext(
        new HttpContextWrapper(fakeContext),
        controller.ControllerContext.RouteData,
        controller.ControllerContext.Controller);

    var oldContext = HttpContext.Current;
    HttpContext.Current = fakeContext;

    //Use HtmlHelper to render partial view to fake context
    var html = new HtmlHelper(new ViewContext(fakeControllerContext,
        new FakeView(), new ViewDataDictionary(), new TempDataDictionary()),
        new ViewPage());
    html.RenderPartial(viewName, viewData);

    //Restore context
    HttpContext.Current = oldContext;    

    //Flush memory and return output
    memWriter.Flush();
    return sb.ToString();
}

/// <summary>Fake IView implementation used to instantiate an HtmlHelper.</summary>
public class FakeView : IView {
    #region IView Members

    public void Render(ViewContext viewContext, System.IO.TextWriter writer) {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    #endregion
}

This works on ASP.NET MVC 1.0, together with ContentResult, JsonResult, etc. (changing Headers on the original HttpResponse doesn't throw the "Server cannot set content type after HTTP headers have been sent" exception).

Update: in ASP.NET MVC 2.0 RC, the code changes a bit because we have to pass in the StringWriter used to write the view into the ViewContext:

//...

//Use HtmlHelper to render partial view to fake context
var html = new HtmlHelper(
    new ViewContext(fakeControllerContext, new FakeView(),
        new ViewDataDictionary(), new TempDataDictionary(), memWriter),
    new ViewPage());
html.RenderPartial(viewName, viewData);

//...

This article describes how to render a View to a string in different scenarios:

1. MVC Controller calling another of its own ActionMethods
2. MVC Controller calling an ActionMethod of another MVC Controller
3. WebAPI Controller calling an ActionMethod of an MVC Controller

The solution/code is provided as a class called ViewRenderer. It is part of Rick Stahl's WestwindToolkit at GitHub.

Usage (3. - WebAPI example):

string html = ViewRenderer.RenderView("~/Areas/ReportDetail/Views/ReportDetail/Index.cshtml", ReportVM.Create(id));

If you want to forgo MVC entirely, thereby avoiding all the HttpContext mess...

using RazorEngine;
using RazorEngine.Templating; // For extension methods.

string razorText = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(razorTemplateFileLocation);
string emailBody = Engine.Razor.RunCompile(razorText, "templateKey", typeof(Model), model);

This uses the awesome open source Razor Engine here: https://github.com/Antaris/RazorEngine