CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#asp.net-mvcwebforms-view-engine
Byron Sommardahl
Byron Sommardahl

Reputation: 13002

How to render an ASP.NET MVC ViewResult to HTML?

In a testing situation, I'd like to be able to use the default viewEngine to render a given ViewResult to HTML.

Currently, my views are WebForms-based. But I might have Spark or Razor views at some point. For now, I'd like to focus on WebForms. Can I render my views from a test?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 7151

Answers (1)

StriplingWarrior
StriplingWarrior

Reputation: 156469

Here's a method that will let you render a ViewResult to a string. The only tricky part to using it in your context will be to Mock up a viable ControllerContext.

static string RenderPartialViewToString(ControllerContext context, ViewResultBase partialViewResult)
    {
        Require.ThatArgument(partialViewResult != null);
        Require.That(context != null);
        using (var sw = new StringWriter())
        {
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(partialViewResult.ViewName))
            {
                partialViewResult.ViewName = context.RouteData.GetRequiredString("action");
            }
            ViewEngineResult result = null;
            if (partialViewResult.View == null)
            {
                result = partialViewResult.ViewEngineCollection.FindPartialView(context, partialViewResult.ViewName);
                if(result.View == null)
                    throw new InvalidOperationException(
                                   "Unable to find view. Searched in: " +
                                   string.Join(",", result.SearchedLocations));
                partialViewResult.View = result.View;
            }

            var view = partialViewResult.View;
            var viewContext = new ViewContext(context, view, partialViewResult.ViewData,
                                              partialViewResult.TempData, sw);
            view.Render(viewContext, sw);
            if (result != null)
            {
                result.ViewEngine.ReleaseView(context, view);
            }
            return sw.ToString();
        }
    }

Upvotes: 7

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