Can I use an ASP.Net MVC Razor view to generate an nicely formatted HTML Body as the input for an email sent from the server?

Question

I'd like to make use of the Model Binding / Rendering capabilities of a Razor View to generate the HTML Body Content for an email I'm sending from my ASP.NET MVC Application.

Is there a way to render a view to a string instead of returning it as the ActionResult of a GET request?

To illustrate I'm looking for something that will do the following...

    public ActionResult SendEmail(int id)
    {
        EmailDetailsViewModel emailDetails = EmailDetailsViewModel().CreateEmailDetails(id);

        // THIS IS WHERE I NEED HELP...
        // I want to pass my ViewModel (emailDetails) to my View (EmailBodyRazorView) but instead of Rending that to the Response stream I want to capture the output and pass it to an email client.
        string htmlEmailBody = View("EmailBodyRazorView", emailDetails).ToString();

        // Once I have the htmlEmail body I'm good to go.  I've got a utilityt that will send the email for me.
        MyEmailUtility.SmtpSendEmail("stevejobs@apple.com", "Email Subject", htmlEmailBody);

        // Redirect another Action that will return a page to the user confirming the email was sent.
        return RedirectToAction("ConfirmationEmailWasSent");
    }

possible duplicate of [how to render a razor view, get the html of a rendered view inside an action](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4692131/how-to-render-a-razor-view-get-the-html-of-a-rendered-view-inside-an-action) — marcind, Mar 10 '11 at 22:19
@marcind you are correct. thanks. is there a way for me to mark this as a duplicate? — Justin, Mar 11 '11 at 07:09

Ryan Tofteland · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-22T20:31:16.553

28

If you just need to render the view into a string try something like this:

public string ToHtml(string viewToRender, ViewDataDictionary viewData, ControllerContext controllerContext)
{
    var result = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(controllerContext, viewToRender, null);

    StringWriter output;
    using (output = new StringWriter())
    {
        var viewContext = new ViewContext(controllerContext, result.View, viewData, controllerContext.Controller.TempData, output);
        result.View.Render(viewContext, output);
        result.ViewEngine.ReleaseView(controllerContext, result.View);
    }

    return output.ToString();
}

You'll need to pass in the name of the view and the ViewData and ControllerContext from your controller action.

edited Aug 22 '13 at 20:31

answered Mar 10 '11 at 23:08

Ryan Tofteland

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6
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Very similiar to this solution http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4692131/how-to-render-a-razor-view-get-the-html-of-a-rendered-view-inside-an-action as mentioned by @marcind. But I'll give you the answer since I don't know how to mark this as a duplicate:) Thanks this is the general approach I ended up using. – Justin Mar 11 '11 at 07:17
1

Thx - looking back I see that I'm missing a using() block on the IDisposable StringWriter. Hopefully you remember that on your end. – Ryan Tofteland Mar 11 '11 at 15:29
Hello, I am getting following exception with this code. [InvalidOperationException: The RouteData must contain an item named 'controller' with a non-empty string value.] System.Web.Routing.RouteData.GetRequiredString(String valueName) +3193976 System.Web.Mvc.VirtualPathProviderViewEngine.FindView(ControllerContext controllerContext, String viewName, String masterName, Boolean useCache) +77 – lsc Feb 27 '16 at 10:30
Can you add a code snippet to call from a typical controller action? Then your answer will be the best one in S/O history ever. I promise :) – toddmo Jan 09 '17 at 19:43

score 10 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 10 '11 at 22:20

10

You may checkout Postal for using views for sending emails.

answered Mar 10 '11 at 22:20

Darin Dimitrov

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A neat project gave you a point but I've already got the email sending part all hooked up to my backend so the simple View.Render solution is a fair bit more lightweight for my purposes. Thanks though! – Justin Mar 11 '11 at 07:15

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 10 '11 at 22:20

4

Try MvcMailer: http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/MvcMailerNuGet.aspx

answered Mar 10 '11 at 22:20

CD..

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Only -1ing to take the opportunity to chime in with 'ActionMailer.net is better (less buggie). – justSteve Jan 31 '13 at 01:18

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 10 '11 at 22:27

Another one would be ActionMailer.Net: https://bitbucket.org/swaj/actionmailer.net/wiki/Home

From the website: An MVC 3-based port of the Rails ActionMailer library to ASP.NET MVC. The goal is to make it easy and relatively painless to send email from your application.

NuGet: Install-Package ActionMailer

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 21 '14 at 07:49

There is also Essential Mail: Razor package from NuGet. It is build over RazorEngine and provides simple interface for email rendering.

Email message template looks something like

@inherits Essential.Templating.Razor.Email.EmailTemplate
@using System.Net;
@{
    From = new MailAddress("example@email.com");
    Subject = "Email Subject";
}
@section Html 
{
   <html>
      <head>
          <title>Example</title>
      </head>
      <body>
          <h1>HTML part of the email</h1>
      </body>
   </html>
}
@section Text 
{
    Text part of the email.
}

The project is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/smolyakoff/essential-templating/wiki/Email-Template-with-Razor

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 09 '17 at 21:25

Based on Ryan's answer, I did an extension method:

public static string RenderViewToString(this Controller source, string viewName)
{
  var viewEngineResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(source.ControllerContext, viewName, null);
  using (StringWriter output = new StringWriter())
  {
    viewEngineResult.View.Render(new ViewContext(source.ControllerContext, viewEngineResult.View, source.ViewData, source.TempData, output), output);
    viewEngineResult.ViewEngine.ReleaseView(source.ControllerContext, viewEngineResult.View);
    return output.ToString();
  }
}

To call from inside a controller action (example usage):

  [AllowAnonymous]
  public class ErrorController : Controller
  {
    // GET: Error
    public ActionResult Index(System.Net.HttpStatusCode id)
    {
      Exception ex = null; // how do i get the exception that was thrown?
      if (!Debugger.IsAttached)
        Code.Email.Send(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["BugReportEmailAddress"], 
          $"Bug Report: AgentPortal: {ex?.Message}", 
          this.RenderViewToString("BugReport"));
      Response.StatusCode = (int)id;
      return View();
    }
  }

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Apr 02 '20 at 21:40

Still working outside a web app with the last MVC FullFW

http://fabiomaulo.blogspot.com/2011/08/parse-string-as-razor-template.html

You can create a worker consuming queue rendering and sending emails outside the web. Few code lines, you don't need another package over Razor.

Can I use an ASP.Net MVC Razor view to generate an nicely formatted HTML Body as the input for an email sent from the server?

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