MVC5 Render View (with parameters) as String

Question

I have seen many examples in MVC on how to render a view as a string, but I have been unsuccessful in getting it to work if my view has any parameters.

For example I have written a mail subscription email as a view, I want to call the view with a mailID as a parameter to obtain the subscribers details to send a personalised email.

Say I have a controller called Email and a View inside it called SubscribeMail with a parameter called mid

I am using the below function to send the email. Unfortunately it never receives the mail ID and in debugging mode never hits a breakpoint in the view (assuming based on the parameters being past it never hits the view I wrote), yet the sent email still sends the html inside the view, just never receives the personalised data being passed in the viewbag based on the parameters.

This is the function I currently have:

public static string RenderViewToString(string controllerName, string viewName, object viewData)
{
    var context = HttpContext.Current;
    var contextBase = new HttpContextWrapper(context); 
    var routeData = new RouteData();     
    routeData.Values.Add("controller", controllerName);     

    var controllerContext = new ControllerContext(contextBase,  
                                                  routeData,    
                                                  new EmptyController());

    var razorViewEngine = new RazorViewEngine();
    var razorViewResult = razorViewEngine.FindView(controllerContext,    
                                                   viewName,     
                                                   "",   
                                                   false);

    var writer = new StringWriter();
    var viewContext = new ViewContext(controllerContext, 
                                      razorViewResult.View,              
                                      new ViewDataDictionary(viewData),   
                                      new TempDataDictionary(), 
                                      writer);
    razorViewResult.View.Render(viewContext, writer);

    return writer.ToString();
}

Which I am calling with:

RenderViewToString("Email","MailSubscribe",new KeyValuePair<string,int>("mid",newSubscription.MailID))

Here is the controller view I am trying to hit (although debugging never reaches it):

public ActionResult MailSubscribe(int mailId)
{
    using (var context = new MyEntities())
    {
        subMail result = context.subMails.FirstOrDefault(x => x.MailID == mailId);
        if (result != null)
        {
            ViewBag.Name = result.FirstName;
        }
    }
    return View();
}

Any idea how I could improve this as the Email/MailSubscribe view is being hit, but not via the method I made.

possible duplicate of [Render a view as a string](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/483091/render-a-view-as-a-string) — Sam Axe, Mar 21 '15 at 13:59
Not a duplicate, my difference is adding parameters. Please read a question rather than trying to flag it without having half a look. While we appreciate the cleaning of rubbish questions here, we still ask that u respect each question first. — Cyassin, Mar 22 '15 at 05:57

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 21 '15 at 14:49

1

The point is that RenderViewToString renders a view. It doesn't call an action. I assume what you want to achieve is something like this:

string name = string.Empty;
using (var context = new MyEntities())
{
    subMail result = context.subMails.FirstOrDefault(x => x.MailID == mailId);
    if (result != null)
    {
        name = result.FirstName;
    }
}
string output = RenderViewToString("Email","MailSubscribe", new { mailId = mailId, Name = name});

answered Mar 21 '15 at 14:49

Stephen Reindl

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Thanks for this Stephen, I have completely confused a view with an action. Are you aware of any links on how to do this for an action? Thanks again. – Cyassin Mar 22 '15 at 05:55
What Do you want to achieve? Calling an action and to retrieve the view's response as a string? It's a little bit tricky as actions return an Action response which can be a view, a redirect, JSON, ... If I need to retrieve a response as string (and maybe also as action) I move the code into the business layer (i.e. separate class) which can be called from the action and also from other code parts. – Stephen Reindl Mar 22 '15 at 09:20

MVC5 Render View (with parameters) as String

1 Answers1