MVC Widget generated in class library

Question

I'm trying to create a re-usable widget in a stand-alone project that I can reference in other solutions in the future.

I would like to achieve the following:

In my MVC project, I can call out to a helper method contained in my class library (separate project) which will generate the HTML I need. (This is already implemented).
HTML returned is currently hard-coded in the class (bad). The HTML should not be hard-coded within a class, but instead should use the razor view engine to generate the HTML. It should do this using a .cshtml file contained within the class library itself.

Solution structure is as follows:

Shared-UI (class-library)
    /  Views
        /  DataGrid
            /  _DataGrid.cshtml
    /  Models
        /  DataGridModel.cs
    /  Widgets
        /  DataGrid.cs
    ViewUtils.cs

Site (Actual MVC site)
    /  Controllers
        /  HomeController.cs
    / Views
        /  Home
            /  Index.cshtml

Currently the Index view in the site project is creating a new instance of the DataGrid object from the Shared-UI project. Calling ToString() on this object returns currently some hard-coded HTML.

As the HTML is getting quite complex, I want this to be generated via Razor using the DataGridModel and the _DataGrid partial view, instead of being hard-coded within the class.

I'm trying to use the following method in my ViewUtils class to achieve this:

public static string RenderPartialToString(string controlName, object viewData)
    {
        ViewPage viewPage = new ViewPage() { ViewContext = new ViewContext() };

        viewPage.ViewData = new ViewDataDictionary(viewData);
        viewPage.Controls.Add(viewPage.LoadControl(controlName));

        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(sb))
        {
            using (HtmlTextWriter tw = new HtmlTextWriter(sw))
            {
                viewPage.RenderControl(tw);
            }
        }

        return sb.ToString();
    }

I am calling this from the .ToString() method of my DataGrid class:

public override string ToString()
    {
        DataGridModel model = new DataGridModel();
        model.Id = this.Id;

        string html = ViewUtils.RenderPartialToString("_DataGrid", model);
        return html; 
    }

However this throws an HttpException when I try and call viewPage.LoadControl(controlName), because the _DataGrid view cannot be found (The file '/_DataGrid' does not exist.). I have a feeling that it is searching for views in my site project, not in the shared library - but this is just a guess. (I have tried many different combinations of the view path, including/excluding full paths and/or file extensions).

Does anyone know how to get a class library to return HTML generated by Razor using a view contained in it's own library project?

Refer [this answer](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24341336/is-it-possible-to-access-mvc-views-located-in-another-project) — , Aug 19 '16 at 09:55
But this is a separate project trying to access views in it's own project. My MVC site doesn't need to directly access the views located in the separate UI project. The problem is that the UI project cannot seem to find it's own views folder. — Mike Baxter, Aug 19 '16 at 09:58

MVC Widget generated in class library

0 Answers0