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  • Learning MVC - Maintaining model state

    - by GenericTypeTea
    First of all, I'm very new to MVC. Bought the books, but not got the T-Shirt yet. I've put together my first little application, but I'm looking at the way I'm maintaining my model and I don't think it looks right. My form contains the following: <% using (Html.BeginForm("Reconfigured", null, FormMethod.Post, new { id = "configurationForm" })) { %> <%= Html.DropDownList("selectedCompany", new SelectList(Model.Companies, Model.SelectedCompany), new { onchange = "$('#configurationForm').submit()" })%> <%= Html.DropDownList("selectedDepartment", new SelectList(Model.Departments, Model.SelectedDepartment), new { onchange = "$('#configurationForm').submit()" })%> <%=Html.TextArea("comment", Model.Comment) %> <%} %> My controller has the following: public ActionResult Index(string company, string department, string comment) { TestModel form = new TestModel(); form.Departments = _someRepository.GetList(); form.Companies = _someRepository.GetList(); form.Comment = comment; form.SelectedCompany = company; form.SelectedDepartment = department; return View(form); } [HttpPost] public ActionResult Reconfigured(string selectedCompany, string selectedDepartment, string comment) { return RedirectToAction("Index", new { company = selectedCompany, department = selectedDepartment, comment = comment}); } And finally, this is my route: routes.MapRoute( "Default", "{controller}/{company}/{department}", new { controller = "CompanyController", action = "Index", company="", department="" } ); Now, every time I change DropDownList value, all my values are maintained. I end up with a URL like the following after the Reconfigure action is called: http://localhost/Main/Index/Company/Sales?comment=Foo%20Bar Ideally I'd like the URL to remain as: http://localhost/Main/Index My routing object is probably wrong. This can't be the right way? It seems totally wrong to me as for each extra field I add, I have to add the property into the Index() method? I had a look at this answer where the form is passed through TempData. This is obviously an improvement, but it's not strongly typed? Is there a way to do something similar but have it strongly typed? This may be a simple-enough question, but the curse of 10 years of WinForms/WebForms makes this MVC malarky hard to get your head 'round.

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  • How to update textbox value

    - by Thomas
    I have a textbox in my View. I input a number into the textbox, and then i want the controller to multiply the number and put the result into the textbox. How can I do that? This is what i have done already. Let's start with the View: <%@ Page Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage<dynamic>" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head runat="server"> <title>Index</title> </head> <body> <div> <h2>Please enter a number</h2> <% using (Html.BeginForm()) { %> <%=Html.TextBox("number")%> <input type="submit" value="Index" name ="Index" /> <% } %> </div> </body> </html> As you can see I have a simple textbox and button. This is my controller: using System.Web.Mvc; namespace MvcApplication1.Controllers { public class HomeController : Controller { // // GET: /Home/ public ActionResult Index() { return View(); } [HttpPost] public ActionResult Index(int number) { number = number * 2; ViewData["id"] = number; return View(ViewData); } } } But nothing really happens. Yeah, I see the Post is being done, and the coded steps into public ActionResult Index(int number). I see that the number is taken from the textbox, it's multiplied correctly. I've tried using ViewData as you can see. I've also used TempData. This is another code for the textbox in the View I've tried: <%=Html.TextBox("number", ViewData["number"])%> But it doesn't matter. The textbox doesn't get updated with the new value. How can I do that?

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  • Is there simple way how to join two RouteValueDictionary values to pass parameters to Html.ActionLin

    - by atagaew
    Hi. Look on my code that i created in a partial View: <% foreach (Customer customerInfo in Model.DataRows) {%> <tr> <td> <%=Html.ActionLink( customerInfo.FullName , ((string)ViewData["ActionNameForSelectedCustomer"]) , JoinParameters(customerInfo.id, (RouteValueDictionary) ViewData["AdditionalSelectionParameters"]) , null)%> </td> <td> <%=customerInfo.LegalGuardianName %> </td> <td> <%=customerInfo.HomePhone %> </td> <td> <%=customerInfo.CellPhone %> </td> </tr> <%}%> Here I'm building simple table that showing customer's details. As you may see, in each row, I'm trying to build a link that will redirect to another action. That action requires customerId and some additional parameters. Additional parameters are different for each page where this partial View is using. So, i decided to make Action methods to pass that additional parameters in the ViewData as RouteValueDictionary instance. Now, on the view i have a problem, i need to pass customerId and that RouteValueDictionary together into Html.ActionLink method. That makes me to figure out some way of how to combine all that params into one object (either object or new RouteValueDictionary instance) Because of the way the MVC does, i can't create create a method in the codebehind class (there is no codebihind in MVC) that will join that parameters. So, i used ugly way - inserted inline code: ...script runat="server"... private RouteValueDictionary JoinParameters(int customerId, RouteValueDictionary defaultValues) { RouteValueDictionary routeValueDictionary = new RouteValueDictionary(defaultValues); routeValueDictionary.Add("customerId", customerId); return routeValueDictionary; } ...script... This way is very ugly for me, because i hate to use inline code in the View part. My question is - is there any better way of how i can mix parameters passed from the action (in ViewData, TempData, other...) and the parameter from the view when building action links. May be i can build this link in other way ? Thanks!

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  • Mocking HtmlHelper throws NullReferenceException

    - by Matt Austin
    I know that there are a few questions on StackOverflow on this topic but I haven't been able to get any of the suggestions to work for me. I've been banging my head against this for two days now so its time to ask for help... The following code snippit is a simplified unit test to demonstrate what I'm trying to do, which is basically call RadioButtonFor in the Microsoft.Web.Mvc assembly in a unit test. var model = new SendMessageModel { SendMessageType = SendMessageType.Member }; var vd = new ViewDataDictionary(model); vd.TemplateInfo = new TemplateInfo { HtmlFieldPrefix = string.Empty }; var controllerContext = new ControllerContext(new Mock<HttpContextBase>().Object, new RouteData(), new Mock<ControllerBase>().Object); var viewContext = new Mock<ViewContext>(new object[] { controllerContext, new Mock<IView>().Object, vd, new TempDataDictionary(), new Mock<TextWriter>().Object }); viewContext.Setup(v => v.View).Returns(new Mock<IView>().Object); viewContext.Setup(v => v.ViewData).Returns(vd).Callback(() => {throw new Exception("ViewData extracted");}); viewContext.Setup(v => v.TempData).Returns(new TempDataDictionary()); viewContext.Setup(v => v.Writer).Returns(new Mock<TextWriter>().Object); viewContext.Setup(v => v.RouteData).Returns(new RouteData()); viewContext.Setup(v => v.HttpContext).Returns(new Mock<HttpContextBase>().Object); viewContext.Setup(v => v.Controller).Returns(new Mock<ControllerBase>().Object); viewContext.Setup(v => v.FormContext).Returns(new FormContext()); var mockContainer = new Mock<IViewDataContainer>(); mockContainer.Setup(x => x.ViewData).Returns(vd); var helper = new HtmlHelper<ISendMessageModel>(viewContext.Object, mockContainer.Object, new RouteCollection()); helper.RadioButtonFor(m => m.SendMessageType, "Member", cssClass: "selector"); If I remove the cssClass parameter then the code works ok but fails consistently when adding additional parameters. I've tried every combination of mocking, instantiating concrete types and using fakes that I can think off but I always get a NullReferenceException when I call RadioButtonFor. Any help hugely appreciated!!

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  • MVC Portable Area Modules *Without* MasterPages

    - by Steve Michelotti
    Portable Areas from MvcContrib provide a great way to build modular and composite applications on top of MVC. In short, portable areas provide a way to distribute MVC binary components as simple .NET assemblies where the aspx/ascx files are actually compiled into the assembly as embedded resources. I’ve blogged about Portable Areas in the past including this post here which talks about embedding resources and you can read more of an intro to Portable Areas here. As great as Portable Areas are, the question that seems to come up the most is: what about MasterPages? MasterPages seems to be the one thing that doesn’t work elegantly with portable areas because you specify the MasterPage in the @Page directive and it won’t use the same mechanism of the view engine so you can’t just embed them as resources. This means that you end up referencing a MasterPage that exists in the host application but not in your portable area. If you name the ContentPlaceHolderId’s correctly, it will work – but it all seems a little fragile. Ultimately, what I want is to be able to build a portable area as a module which has no knowledge of the host application. I want to be able to invoke the module by a full route on the user’s browser and it gets invoked and “automatically appears” inside the application’s visual chrome just like a MasterPage. So how could we accomplish this with portable areas? With this question in mind, I looked around at what other people are doing to address similar problems. Specifically, I immediately looked at how the Orchard team is handling this and I found it very compelling. Basically Orchard has its own custom layout/theme framework (utilizing a custom view engine) that allows you to build your module without any regard to the host. You simply decorate your controller with the [Themed] attribute and it will render with the outer chrome around it: 1: [Themed] 2: public class HomeController : Controller Here is the slide from the Orchard talk at this year MIX conference which shows how it conceptually works:   It’s pretty cool stuff.  So I figure, it must not be too difficult to incorporate this into the portable areas view engine as an optional piece of functionality. In fact, I’ll even simplify it a little – rather than have 1) Document.aspx, 2) Layout.ascx, and 3) <view>.ascx (as shown in the picture above); I’ll just have the outer page be “Chrome.aspx” and then the specific view in question. The Chrome.aspx not only takes the place of the MasterPage, but now since we’re no longer constrained by the MasterPage infrastructure, we have the choice of the Chrome.aspx living in the host or inside the portable areas as another embedded resource! Disclaimer: credit where credit is due – much of the code from this post is me re-purposing the Orchard code to suit my needs. To avoid confusion with Orchard, I’m going to refer to my implementation (which will be based on theirs) as a Chrome rather than a Theme. The first step I’ll take is to create a ChromedAttribute which adds a flag to the current HttpContext to indicate that the controller designated Chromed like this: 1: [Chromed] 2: public class HomeController : Controller The attribute itself is an MVC ActionFilter attribute: 1: public class ChromedAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute 2: { 3: public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext) 4: { 5: var chromedAttribute = GetChromedAttribute(filterContext.ActionDescriptor); 6: if (chromedAttribute != null) 7: { 8: filterContext.HttpContext.Items[typeof(ChromedAttribute)] = null; 9: } 10: } 11:   12: public static bool IsApplied(RequestContext context) 13: { 14: return context.HttpContext.Items.Contains(typeof(ChromedAttribute)); 15: } 16:   17: private static ChromedAttribute GetChromedAttribute(ActionDescriptor descriptor) 18: { 19: return descriptor.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(ChromedAttribute), true) 20: .Concat(descriptor.ControllerDescriptor.GetCustomAttributes(typeof(ChromedAttribute), true)) 21: .OfType<ChromedAttribute>() 22: .FirstOrDefault(); 23: } 24: } With that in place, we only have to override the FindView() method of the custom view engine with these 6 lines of code: 1: public override ViewEngineResult FindView(ControllerContext controllerContext, string viewName, string masterName, bool useCache) 2: { 3: if (ChromedAttribute.IsApplied(controllerContext.RequestContext)) 4: { 5: var bodyView = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(controllerContext, viewName); 6: var documentView = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(controllerContext, "Chrome"); 7: var chromeView = new ChromeView(bodyView, documentView); 8: return new ViewEngineResult(chromeView, this); 9: } 10:   11: // Just execute normally without applying Chromed View Engine 12: return base.FindView(controllerContext, viewName, masterName, useCache); 13: } If the view engine finds the [Chromed] attribute, it will invoke it’s own process – otherwise, it’ll just defer to the normal web forms view engine (with masterpages). The ChromeView’s primary job is to independently set the BodyContent on the view context so that it can be rendered at the appropriate place: 1: public class ChromeView : IView 2: { 3: private ViewEngineResult bodyView; 4: private ViewEngineResult documentView; 5:   6: public ChromeView(ViewEngineResult bodyView, ViewEngineResult documentView) 7: { 8: this.bodyView = bodyView; 9: this.documentView = documentView; 10: } 11:   12: public void Render(ViewContext viewContext, System.IO.TextWriter writer) 13: { 14: ChromeViewContext chromeViewContext = ChromeViewContext.From(viewContext); 15:   16: // First render the Body view to the BodyContent 17: using (var bodyViewWriter = new StringWriter()) 18: { 19: var bodyViewContext = new ViewContext(viewContext, bodyView.View, viewContext.ViewData, viewContext.TempData, bodyViewWriter); 20: this.bodyView.View.Render(bodyViewContext, bodyViewWriter); 21: chromeViewContext.BodyContent = bodyViewWriter.ToString(); 22: } 23: // Now render the Document view 24: this.documentView.View.Render(viewContext, writer); 25: } 26: } The ChromeViewContext (code excluded here) mainly just has a string property for the “BodyContent” – but it also makes sure to put itself in the HttpContext so it’s available. Finally, we created a little extension method so the module’s view can be rendered in the appropriate place: 1: public static void RenderBody(this HtmlHelper htmlHelper) 2: { 3: ChromeViewContext chromeViewContext = ChromeViewContext.From(htmlHelper.ViewContext); 4: htmlHelper.ViewContext.Writer.Write(chromeViewContext.BodyContent); 5: } At this point, the other thing left is to decide how we want to implement the Chrome.aspx page. One approach is the copy/paste the HTML from the typical Site.Master and change the main content placeholder to use the HTML helper above – this way, there are no MasterPages anywhere. Alternatively, we could even have Chrome.aspx utilize the MasterPage if we wanted (e.g., in the case where some pages are Chromed and some pages want to use traditional MasterPage): 1: <%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Views/Shared/Site.Master" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage" %> 2: <asp:Content ID="Content2" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> 3: <% Html.RenderBody(); %> 4: </asp:Content> At this point, it’s all academic. I can create a controller like this: 1: [Chromed] 2: public class WidgetController : Controller 3: { 4: public ActionResult Index() 5: { 6: return View(); 7: } 8: } Then I’ll just create Index.ascx (a partial view) and put in the text “Inside my widget”. Now when I run the app, I can request the full route (notice the controller name of “widget” in the address bar below) and the HTML from my Index.ascx will just appear where it is supposed to.   This means no more warnings for missing MasterPages and no more need for your module to have knowledge of the host’s MasterPage placeholders. You have the option of using the Chrome.aspx in the host or providing your own while embedding it as an embedded resource itself. I’m curious to know what people think of this approach. The code above was done with my own local copy of MvcContrib so it’s not currently something you can download. At this point, these are just my initial thoughts – just incorporating some ideas for Orchard into non-Orchard apps to enable building modular/composite apps more easily. Additionally, on the flip side, I still believe that Portable Areas have potential as the module packaging story for Orchard itself.   What do you think?

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  • Rendering a view to a string in MVC, then redirecting -- workarounds?

    - by James S
    Hi -- I can't render a view to a string and then redirect, despite this answer from Feb (after version 1.0, I think) that claims it's possible. I thought I was doing something wrong, and then I read this answer from Haack in July that claims it's not possible. If somebody has it working and can help me get it working, that's great (and I'll post code, errors). However, I'm now at the point of needing workarounds. There are a few, but nothing ideal. Has anybody solved this, or have any comments on my ideas? This is to render email. While I can surely send the email outside of the web request (store info in a db and get it later), there are many types of emails and I don't want to store the template data (user object, a few other LINQ objects) in a db to let it get rendered later. I could create a simpler, serializable POCO and save that in the db, but why? ... I just want rendered text! I can create a new RedirectToAction object that checks if the headers have been sent (can't figure out how to do this -- try/catch?) and, if so, builds out a simple page with a meta redirect, a javascript redirect, and also a "click here" link. Within my controller, I can remember if I've rendered an email and, if so, manually do #2 by displaying a view. I can manually send the redirect headers before any potential email rendering. Then, rather than using the MVC infrastructure to redirecttoaction, I just call result.end. This seems easiest, but really messy. Anything else? EDIT: I've tried Dan's code (very similar to the code from Jan/Feb that I've already tried) and I'm still getting the same error. The only substantial difference I can see is that his example uses a view while I use a partial view. I'll try testing this later with a view. Here's what I've got: Controller public ActionResult Certifications(string email_intro) { //a lot of stuff ViewData["users"] = users; if (isPost()) { //create the viewmodel var view_model = new ViewModels.Emails.Certifications.Open(userContext) { emailIntro = email_intro }; //i've tried stopping this after just one iteration, in case the problem is due to calling it multiple times foreach (var user in users) { if (user.Email_Address.IsValidEmailAddress()) { //add more stuff to the view model specific to this user view_model.user = user; view_model.certification302Summary.subProcessesOwner = new SubProcess_Certifications(RecordUpdating.Role.Owner, null, null, user.User_ID, repository); //more here.... //if i comment out the next line, everything works ok SendEmail(view_model, this.ControllerContext); } } return RedirectToAction("Certifications"); } return View(); } SendEmail() public static void SendEmail(ViewModels.Emails.Certifications.Open model, ControllerContext context) { var vd = context.Controller.ViewData; vd["model"] = model; var renderer = new CustomRenderers(); //i fixed an error in your code here var text = renderer.RenderViewToString3(context, "~/Views/Emails/Certifications/Open.ascx", "", vd, null); var a = text; } CustomRenderers public class CustomRenderers { public virtual string RenderViewToString3(ControllerContext controllerContext, string viewPath, string masterPath, ViewDataDictionary viewData, TempDataDictionary tempData) { //copy/paste of dan's code } } Error [HttpException (0x80004005): Cannot redirect after HTTP headers have been sent.] System.Web.HttpResponse.Redirect(String url, Boolean endResponse) +8707691 Thanks, James

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  • Rendering ASP.NET MVC Views to String

    - by Rick Strahl
    It's not uncommon in my applications that I require longish text output that does not have to be rendered into the HTTP output stream. The most common scenario I have for 'template driven' non-Web text is for emails of all sorts. Logon confirmations and verifications, email confirmations for things like orders, status updates or scheduler notifications - all of which require merged text output both within and sometimes outside of Web applications. On other occasions I also need to capture the output from certain views for logging purposes. Rather than creating text output in code, it's much nicer to use the rendering mechanism that ASP.NET MVC already provides by way of it's ViewEngines - using Razor or WebForms views - to render output to a string. This is nice because it uses the same familiar rendering mechanism that I already use for my HTTP output and it also solves the problem of where to store the templates for rendering this content in nothing more than perhaps a separate view folder. The good news is that ASP.NET MVC's rendering engine is much more modular than the full ASP.NET runtime engine which was a real pain in the butt to coerce into rendering output to string. With MVC the rendering engine has been separated out from core ASP.NET runtime, so it's actually a lot easier to get View output into a string. Getting View Output from within an MVC Application If you need to generate string output from an MVC and pass some model data to it, the process to capture this output is fairly straight forward and involves only a handful of lines of code. The catch is that this particular approach requires that you have an active ControllerContext that can be passed to the view. This means that the following approach is limited to access from within Controller methods. Here's a class that wraps the process and provides both instance and static methods to handle the rendering:/// <summary> /// Class that renders MVC views to a string using the /// standard MVC View Engine to render the view. /// /// Note: This class can only be used within MVC /// applications that have an active ControllerContext. /// </summary> public class ViewRenderer { /// <summary> /// Required Controller Context /// </summary> protected ControllerContext Context { get; set; } public ViewRenderer(ControllerContext controllerContext) { Context = controllerContext; } /// <summary> /// Renders a full MVC view to a string. Will render with the full MVC /// View engine including running _ViewStart and merging into _Layout /// </summary> /// <param name="viewPath"> /// The path to the view to render. Either in same controller, shared by /// name or as fully qualified ~/ path including extension /// </param> /// <param name="model">The model to render the view with</param> /// <returns>String of the rendered view or null on error</returns> public string RenderView(string viewPath, object model) { return RenderViewToStringInternal(viewPath, model, false); } /// <summary> /// Renders a partial MVC view to string. Use this method to render /// a partial view that doesn't merge with _Layout and doesn't fire /// _ViewStart. /// </summary> /// <param name="viewPath"> /// The path to the view to render. Either in same controller, shared by /// name or as fully qualified ~/ path including extension /// </param> /// <param name="model">The model to pass to the viewRenderer</param> /// <returns>String of the rendered view or null on error</returns> public string RenderPartialView(string viewPath, object model) { return RenderViewToStringInternal(viewPath, model, true); } public static string RenderView(string viewPath, object model, ControllerContext controllerContext) { ViewRenderer renderer = new ViewRenderer(controllerContext); return renderer.RenderView(viewPath, model); } public static string RenderPartialView(string viewPath, object model, ControllerContext controllerContext) { ViewRenderer renderer = new ViewRenderer(controllerContext); return renderer.RenderPartialView(viewPath, model); } protected string RenderViewToStringInternal(string viewPath, object model, bool partial = false) { // first find the ViewEngine for this view ViewEngineResult viewEngineResult = null; if (partial) viewEngineResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(Context, viewPath); else viewEngineResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindView(Context, viewPath, null); if (viewEngineResult == null) throw new FileNotFoundException(Properties.Resources.ViewCouldNotBeFound); // get the view and attach the model to view data var view = viewEngineResult.View; Context.Controller.ViewData.Model = model; string result = null; using (var sw = new StringWriter()) { var ctx = new ViewContext(Context, view, Context.Controller.ViewData, Context.Controller.TempData, sw); view.Render(ctx, sw); result = sw.ToString(); } return result; } } The key is the RenderViewToStringInternal method. The method first tries to find the view to render based on its path which can either be in the current controller's view path or the shared view path using its simple name (PasswordRecovery) or alternately by its full virtual path (~/Views/Templates/PasswordRecovery.cshtml). This code should work both for Razor and WebForms views although I've only tried it with Razor Views. Note that WebForms Views might actually be better for plain text as Razor adds all sorts of white space into its output when there are code blocks in the template. The Web Forms engine provides more accurate rendering for raw text scenarios. Once a view engine is found the view to render can be retrieved. Views in MVC render based on data that comes off the controller like the ViewData which contains the model along with the actual ViewData and ViewBag. From the View and some of the Context data a ViewContext is created which is then used to render the view with. The View picks up the Model and other data from the ViewContext internally and processes the View the same it would be processed if it were to send its output into the HTTP output stream. The difference is that we can override the ViewContext's output stream which we provide and capture into a StringWriter(). After rendering completes the result holds the output string. If an error occurs the error behavior is similar what you see with regular MVC errors - you get a full yellow screen of death including the view error information with the line of error highlighted. It's your responsibility to handle the error - or let it bubble up to your regular Controller Error filter if you have one. To use the simple class you only need a single line of code if you call the static methods. Here's an example of some Controller code that is used to send a user notification to a customer via email in one of my applications:[HttpPost] public ActionResult ContactSeller(ContactSellerViewModel model) { InitializeViewModel(model); var entryBus = new busEntry(); var entry = entryBus.LoadByDisplayId(model.EntryId); if ( string.IsNullOrEmpty(model.Email) ) entryBus.ValidationErrors.Add("Email address can't be empty.","Email"); if ( string.IsNullOrEmpty(model.Message)) entryBus.ValidationErrors.Add("Message can't be empty.","Message"); model.EntryId = entry.DisplayId; model.EntryTitle = entry.Title; if (entryBus.ValidationErrors.Count > 0) { ErrorDisplay.AddMessages(entryBus.ValidationErrors); ErrorDisplay.ShowError("Please correct the following:"); } else { string message = ViewRenderer.RenderView("~/views/template/ContactSellerEmail.cshtml",model, ControllerContext); string title = entry.Title + " (" + entry.DisplayId + ") - " + App.Configuration.ApplicationName; AppUtils.SendEmail(title, message, model.Email, entry.User.Email, false, false)) } return View(model); } Simple! The view in this case is just a plain MVC view and in this case it's a very simple plain text email message (edited for brevity here) that is created and sent off:@model ContactSellerViewModel @{ Layout = null; }re: @Model.EntryTitle @Model.ListingUrl @Model.Message ** SECURITY ADVISORY - AVOID SCAMS ** Avoid: wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home ** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping ** More Info: @(App.Configuration.ApplicationBaseUrl)scams.html Obviously this is a very simple view (I edited out more from this page to keep it brief) -  but other template views are much more complex HTML documents or long messages that are occasionally updated and they are a perfect fit for Razor rendering. It even works with nested partial views and _layout pages. Partial Rendering Notice that I'm rendering a full View here. In the view I explicitly set the Layout=null to avoid pulling in _layout.cshtml for this view. This can also be controlled externally by calling the RenderPartial method instead: string message = ViewRenderer.RenderPartialView("~/views/template/ContactSellerEmail.cshtml",model, ControllerContext); with this line of code no layout page (or _viewstart) will be loaded, so the output generated is just what's in the view. I find myself using Partials most of the time when rendering templates, since the target of templates usually tend to be emails or other HTML fragment like output, so the RenderPartialView() method is definitely useful to me. Rendering without a ControllerContext The preceding class is great when you're need template rendering from within MVC controller actions or anywhere where you have access to the request Controller. But if you don't have a controller context handy - maybe inside a utility function that is static, a non-Web application, or an operation that runs asynchronously in ASP.NET - which makes using the above code impossible. I haven't found a way to manually create a Controller context to provide the ViewContext() what it needs from outside of the MVC infrastructure. However, there are ways to accomplish this,  but they are a bit more complex. It's possible to host the RazorEngine on your own, which side steps all of the MVC framework and HTTP and just deals with the raw rendering engine. I wrote about this process in Hosting the Razor Engine in Non-Web Applications a long while back. It's quite a process to create a custom Razor engine and runtime, but it allows for all sorts of flexibility. There's also a RazorEngine CodePlex project that does something similar. I've been meaning to check out the latter but haven't gotten around to it since I have my own code to do this. The trick to hosting the RazorEngine to have it behave properly inside of an ASP.NET application and properly cache content so templates aren't constantly rebuild and reparsed. Anyway, in the same app as above I have one scenario where no ControllerContext is available: I have a background scheduler running inside of the app that fires on timed intervals. This process could be external but because it's lightweight we decided to fire it right inside of the ASP.NET app on a separate thread. In my app the code that renders these templates does something like this:var model = new SearchNotificationViewModel() { Entries = entries, Notification = notification, User = user }; // TODO: Need logging for errors sending string razorError = null; var result = AppUtils.RenderRazorTemplate("~/views/template/SearchNotificationTemplate.cshtml", model, razorError); which references a couple of helper functions that set up my RazorFolderHostContainer class:public static string RenderRazorTemplate(string virtualPath, object model,string errorMessage = null) { var razor = AppUtils.CreateRazorHost(); var path = virtualPath.Replace("~/", "").Replace("~", "").Replace("/", "\\"); var merged = razor.RenderTemplateToString(path, model); if (merged == null) errorMessage = razor.ErrorMessage; return merged; } /// <summary> /// Creates a RazorStringHostContainer and starts it /// Call .Stop() when you're done with it. /// /// This is a static instance /// </summary> /// <param name="virtualPath"></param> /// <param name="binBasePath"></param> /// <param name="forceLoad"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static RazorFolderHostContainer CreateRazorHost(string binBasePath = null, bool forceLoad = false) { if (binBasePath == null) { if (HttpContext.Current != null) binBasePath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath("~/"); else binBasePath = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory; } if (_RazorHost == null || forceLoad) { if (!binBasePath.EndsWith("\\")) binBasePath += "\\"; //var razor = new RazorStringHostContainer(); var razor = new RazorFolderHostContainer(); razor.TemplatePath = binBasePath; binBasePath += "bin\\"; razor.BaseBinaryFolder = binBasePath; razor.UseAppDomain = false; razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "ClassifiedsBusiness.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "ClassifiedsWeb.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "Westwind.Utilities.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "Westwind.Web.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add(binBasePath + "Westwind.Web.Mvc.dll"); razor.ReferencedAssemblies.Add("System.Web.dll"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("System.Web"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("ClassifiedsBusiness"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("ClassifiedsWeb"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("Westwind.Web"); razor.ReferencedNamespaces.Add("Westwind.Utilities"); _RazorHost = razor; _RazorHost.Start(); //_RazorHost.Engine.Configuration.CompileToMemory = false; } return _RazorHost; } The RazorFolderHostContainer essentially is a full runtime that mimics a folder structure like a typical Web app does including caching semantics and compiling code only if code changes on disk. It maps a folder hierarchy to views using the ~/ path syntax. The host is then configured to add assemblies and namespaces. Unfortunately the engine is not exactly like MVC's Razor - the expression expansion and code execution are the same, but some of the support methods like sections, helpers etc. are not all there so templates have to be a bit simpler. There are other folder hosts provided as well to directly execute templates from strings (using RazorStringHostContainer). The following is an example of an HTML email template @inherits RazorHosting.RazorTemplateFolderHost <ClassifiedsWeb.SearchNotificationViewModel> <html> <head> <title>Search Notifications</title> <style> body { margin: 5px;font-family: Verdana, Arial; font-size: 10pt;} h3 { color: SteelBlue; } .entry-item { border-bottom: 1px solid grey; padding: 8px; margin-bottom: 5px; } </style> </head> <body> Hello @Model.User.Name,<br /> <p>Below are your Search Results for the search phrase:</p> <h3>@Model.Notification.SearchPhrase</h3> <small>since @TimeUtils.ShortDateString(Model.Notification.LastSearch)</small> <hr /> You can see that the syntax is a little different. Instead of the familiar @model header the raw Razor  @inherits tag is used to specify the template base class (which you can extend). I took a quick look through the feature set of RazorEngine on CodePlex (now Github I guess) and the template implementation they use is closer to MVC's razor but there are other differences. In the end don't expect exact behavior like MVC templates if you use an external Razor rendering engine. This is not what I would consider an ideal solution, but it works well enough for this project. My biggest concern is the overhead of hosting a second razor engine in a Web app and the fact that here the differences in template rendering between 'real' MVC Razor views and another RazorEngine really are noticeable. You win some, you lose some It's extremely nice to see that if you have a ControllerContext handy (which probably addresses 99% of Web app scenarios) rendering a view to string using the native MVC Razor engine is pretty simple. Kudos on making that happen - as it solves a problem I see in just about every Web application I work on. But it is a bummer that a ControllerContext is required to make this simple code work. It'd be really sweet if there was a way to render views without being so closely coupled to the ASP.NET or MVC infrastructure that requires a ControllerContext. Alternately it'd be nice to have a way for an MVC based application to create a minimal ControllerContext from scratch - maybe somebody's been down that path. I tried for a few hours to come up with a way to make that work but gave up in the soup of nested contexts (MVC/Controller/View/Http). I suspect going down this path would be similar to hosting the ASP.NET runtime requiring a WorkerRequest. Brrr…. The sad part is that it seems to me that a View should really not require much 'context' of any kind to render output to string. Yes there are a few things that clearly are required like paths to the virtual and possibly the disk paths to the root of the app, but beyond that view rendering should not require much. But, no such luck. For now custom RazorHosting seems to be the only way to make Razor rendering go outside of the MVC context… Resources Full ViewRenderer.cs source code from Westwind.Web.Mvc library Hosting the Razor Engine for Non-Web Applications RazorEngine on GitHub© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET   ASP.NET  MVC   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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