Rendering Partial Views to Strings in ASP.NET MVC

README.md

Rendering a Partial to a String

Sometimes required when you just don't have your JavaScript templating in place..

I tend to wrap this in a protected method in a base controller:

protected string RenderToString(string partial, object model)
{
    return this.RenderPartialToString(partial, model);
}

You can then call it like so: var html = RenderToString("~/Path/To/Partial.cshtml", viewModel);

Props to Kevin Craft at CraftyCode for this.

ControllerExtensions.cs

using System.IO;
using System.Web.Mvc;

namespace Website.App.Extensions
{
    public static class ControllerExtensions
    {
        public static string RenderPartialToString(this Controller controller, string partial, object model)
        {
            controller.ViewData.Model = model;

            using (var sw = new StringWriter())
            {
                var viewResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(controller.ControllerContext, partial);
                var viewContext = new ViewContext(controller.ControllerContext, viewResult.View, controller.ViewData, controller.TempData, sw);
                viewResult.View.Render(viewContext, sw);

                return sw.GetStringBuilder().ToString();
            }
        }
    }
}