Rendering C# Objects to Html

Question

We have bunch of Domain Entities which should be rendered to an html format, which shows their detail in a pop up window.

I would be glad to do something like this:

Product product = new Product(...);
product.ToHtml();  // or: HtmlRenderer.Render(Product);

but my main problem is how to do this stuff from behind. I have 3 different answers:

1. Render By Code:

I can simply write my code for rendering the Html inside the ToHtml Method (C#) - the problem it is that it is too static. if you would like to move a little bit the header to the middle you should change code. moreover, it is very hard to read Html indentation in C#.

2. Using XSL:

XSL Files can easily manage the Html template and using XSLT I can transform XML file to the right place of the documents. the parser already written by someone else (just need to learn the syntax) ** for this we will need that each object could serialize to Xml. and if the object changed -> the Xml will be changed --> the xslt need to be changed too ** this will also give me the option to indent the html easily for example: adding css capabilities and\or change the html design

3. using other template engine:

Write my own C# -> Html template Engine so it will read the template from file (*.template) and will insert the right property in the right place of the template using reflection. ** in this solution we have many issues that we can think of, for example: how the syntax should be like? is this thing ok? %Name% %Description% and how we can handle arrays? ** maybe we can use an existing engine (Brail or T4-Templating)?

What do you prefer? do you know a good engine? for now I prefer the second solution, but it gonna be very slow.

thanks

Answer 1

I once had a need to render a collection of any type to an Html Table. I created an extension method on IEnumerable<T> that had overloads for css and the like. You can see my blog post about it here:

http://crazorsharp.blogspot.com/2009/03/cool-ienumberable-extension-method_25.html

It uses reflection to get all the properties of the object, and renders a nice little table. See if that would work for you.

[System.Runtime.CompilerServices.Extension()]
public string ToHtmlTable<T>(IEnumerable<T> list, string propertiesToIncludeAsColumns = "")
{
    return ToHtmlTable(list, string.Empty, string.Empty, string.Empty, string.Empty, propertiesToIncludeAsColumns);
}

[System.Runtime.CompilerServices.Extension()]
public string ToHtmlTable<T>(IEnumerable<T> list, string tableSyle, string headerStyle, string rowStyle, string alternateRowStyle, string propertiesToIncludeAsColumns = "")
{
    dynamic result = new StringBuilder();
    if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(tableSyle)) {
        result.Append("<table id=\"" + typeof(T).Name + "Table\">");
    } else {
        result.Append((Convert.ToString("<table id=\"" + typeof(T).Name + "Table\" class=\"") + tableSyle) + "\">");
    }

    dynamic propertyArray = typeof(T).GetProperties();

    foreach (object prop in propertyArray) {
       if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(propertiesToIncludeAsColumns) || propertiesToIncludeAsColumns.Contains(prop.Name + ",")) {
        if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(headerStyle)) {
            result.AppendFormat("<th>{0}</th>", prop.Name);
        } else {
            result.AppendFormat("<th class=\"{0}\">{1}</th>", headerStyle, prop.Name);
        }
      }
    }

    for (int i = 0; i <= list.Count() - 1; i++) {
        if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(rowStyle) && !String.IsNullOrEmpty(alternateRowStyle)) {
            result.AppendFormat("<tr class=\"{0}\">", i % 2 == 0 ? rowStyle : alternateRowStyle);

        } else {
            result.AppendFormat("<tr>");
        }
        foreach (object prop in propertyArray) {
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(propertiesToIncludeAsColumns) || propertiesToIncludeAsColumns.Contains(prop.Name + ",")) {
                object value = prop.GetValue(list.ElementAt(i), null);
                result.AppendFormat("<td>{0}</td>", value ?? String.Empty);
            }
        }
        result.AppendLine("</tr>");
    }

    result.Append("</table>");

    return result.ToString();
}