How to serve html file from another directory as ActionResult

Question

I have a specialised case where I wish to serve a straight html file from a Controller Action.

I want to serve it from a different folder other than the Views folder. The file is located in

Solution\Html\index.htm 

And I want to serve it from a standard controller action. Could i use return File? And how do I do this?

Answer 1

Check this out :

    public ActionResult Index()     {         return new FilePathResult("~/Html/index.htm", "text/html");     } 

Answer 2

If you want to render this index.htm file in the browser then you could create controller action like this:

public void GetHtml() {     var encoding = new System.Text.UTF8Encoding();     var htm = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(Server.MapPath("/Solution/Html/") + "index.htm", encoding);     byte[] data = encoding.GetBytes(htm);     Response.OutputStream.Write(data, 0, data.Length);     Response.OutputStream.Flush(); } 

or just by:

public ActionResult GetHtml() {     return File(Server.MapPath("/Solution/Html/") + "index.htm", "text/html");  } 

So lets say this action is in Home controller and some user hits http://yoursite.com/Home/GetHtml then index.htm will be rendered.

EDIT: 2 other methods

If you want to see raw html of index.htm in the browser:

public ActionResult GetHtml() {     Response.AddHeader("Content-Disposition", new System.Net.Mime.ContentDisposition { Inline = true, FileName = "index.htm"}.ToString());     return File(Server.MapPath("/Solution/Html/") + "index.htm", "text/plain");  } 

If you just want to download file:

public FilePathResult GetHtml() {     return File(Server.MapPath("/Solution/Html/") + "index.htm", "text/html", "index.htm");  }