I am struggling for hours to render a view from another controller to a string.
I use that to generate email templates. For this I created a controller called EmailController that has a view ConfirmationEmail.cshtml
I want to render that view in Home.Index action for example. The reason for this is organisation because I want to have the email views in ~/View/Email/... and EmailController will be used just for rendering them. Also ~/View/Shared/Email/... will be ok if you have another suggestion.
Do you suggest another approach?
I saw this thread ASP.NET MVC Razor: How to render a Razor Partial View's HTML inside the controller action but I cannot make it work.
I need something like:
public ActionResult Index()
{
EmailController emailController = new EmailController();
ControllerContext context = new ControllerContext(this.ControllerContext.RequestContext, emailController);
EmailController.RenderPartialViewToString(emailController, "ConfirmationEmail", new EmailModel());
}
This does not work :( and the viewResult object in RenderPartialViewToString method is null.
Do you have a solution for this?
Did you check out MvcMailer project?
https://github.com/smsohan/MvcMailer/wiki/MvcMailer-Step-by-Step-Guide
Why not use FluentEmail? It takes a few seconds to setup using Nuget, and you get all the goodness of Razor templates, with a simple to use email tool.
EmailController.RenderPartialViewToString you passed in emailController instead of context
Modify that line to something like:
EmailController.RenderPartialViewToString(context, "ConfirmationEmail", new EmailModel())
Related
I am new to ASP.NET MVC programming. I would want to know what does the return View(model) does.
public ActionResult CreateProducts(ProductsModel model)
{
/// Some code here.
return View(model);
}
Please read the articles below:
ASP.NET Core Documentation
Introduction to ASP.NET Core
Adding a view
MVC Views
Views Overview
It will return View (html page) with Name "CreateProducts" and controller pass ProductsModel data in "model", which will use to bind with render html.
When you hit the URL, something like http://blah-blah/Products/CreateProducts,
a controller(Product controller in this case) object is created and initialized.
This controller contains the action method CreateProducts which is called via the above url.
The controller's job is to bind the Model and the View and render it as HTML in the Browser.
This is precisely done by the View(model) method.
Hope it helps..
I'm using Render action to inject some tabs into a calling view. I want to be able to get the Title of the view executing the RenderAction method however in the partial view I can't seem to access the viewbag or viewdata. It was my understanding that a partial view gets a copy of the parents viewbag / viewdata dictionary.
I've tried ViewBag.Title and ViewData["title"] but nothing gets returned. Any ideas?
When you use RenderAction, the model used by that action is independent from the one that is in use when you call RenderAction. The same goes for ViewBag and ViewData. If your action called by RenderAction contains no logic, you could change it to RenderPartial to share the model between parent and child actions.
(Posted answer on behalf of the question author in order to move it from the question post).
I found out that if you create a model you can pass that model into the render actions method:
public class ViewInfo{
public string Title { get; set; }
}
then call the renderaction method:
#{ Html.RenderAction("RenderTabs", "Tab", new {Title = ViewBag.Title});}
I have a partial view that shows a list of Categories. I'd like to put that partial view on any page, but I'd like to have it to call to the service and get a list of categories by itself without me having to do that in every controller action. Something like webforms in which you can put a code-behind on it.
For eg.
Actions
public ActionResult Index()
{
JobListViewModel model = new JobListViewModel();
model.Categories= jobService.GetCategories();
return View(model);
}
public ActionResult Details(int id)
{
Job job = jobService.GetJob(id);
return View(job);
}
I created a partial that will take the model.Categories model and display a list. As you can see, the Index page will work fine, but I do not want to call it again in the Details page. Is there a way to make my partialview call to the GetCategories() service by itself?
Use Html.RenderAction - that gives the partial view its own controller action.
You should also mark you partial action with the attribute [ChildActionOnly].
DVark,
As noted in the accepted answer, for your scenario, RenderAction is the most appropriate.
I thought I'd link a little article that distils my thinking on the topic (i.e. when to use RenderPartial vs RenderAction):
http://cbertolasio.wordpress.com/2010/09/21/mvc-html-renderaction-vs-html-renderpartial/
hope it helps
[edit] - as an aside. a year or so ago, i got myself into a few scrapes by not appreciating the power of RenderAction, in favour of RenderPartial. as a result, i had littered the shared view space with lots of partialviews in order to access them from a variety of sources. the moral of the story: know your 'territory' before planting your flag.
How can I get the actual "Main-Controller" in a RenderAction?
Example:
MyRoute:
{controller}/{action}
My url my be:
pages/someaction
tours/someaction
...
In my Site.Master I make a RenderAction:
<% Html.RenderAction("Index", "BreadCrumb"); %>
My BreadCrumbController Action looks like this:
public ActionResult Index(string controller)
{
}
The strings controller contains "BreadCrumb" (which is comprehensible because actually I am in BreadCrumbController).
What's the best way to get the "real" controller (e.g. pages or tours).
Parent view/controller context
If you use MVC 2 RC (don't know about previous releases) you can get to parent controller via view's context, where you will find a property called:
ViewContext ParentActionViewContext;
which is parent view's context and also has a reference to its controller that initiated view rendering...
Routing
It seems to me (from your question) that you have requests with an arbitrary number of route segments... In this case you have two options:
Define your route with a greedy parameter where actions in this case will catch all actions in your request URL
{controller}/{*actions}
Create a custom Route class that will handle your custom route requirements and populate RouteData as needed.
the second one requires a bit more work and routing knowledge but it will help you gain some more knowledge about Asp.net MVC routing. I've done it in the past and it was a valuable lesson. And also an elegant way of handling my custom route requirements.
Could you pass it as a parameter to the controller?
--Site.master--
<% Html.RenderAction("Index", "BreadCrumb"
new { controller = ViewData["controller"] }); %>
--BreadCrumbController.cs--
public ActionResult Index(string controller)
{
}
--ToursController.cs--
public ActionResult SomeAction(...)
{
// ....
ViewData["controller"] = "Tours"
// You could parse the Controller type name from:
// this.ControllerContext.Controller.GetType().Name
// ....
}
What do you mean with "real" controller? Your action points to one controller.
Do you mean the previous controller? So: the controller that was used to render your view where your link was created that points to your breadcrumbcontroller?
Unless you add the name of that controller to the link as a parameter, there is no way to get to that.
I'm trying to pass ViewData to my asp.net mvc masterpage for an mvc usercontrol that I keep on a masterpage. For example, I created a dropdownlist of names as an mvc usercontrol and I put that in my masterpage.
The problem I am running into is passing the ViewData to the masterpage. I found this article from Microsoft which has a decent solution but I was wondering if there are other "better" solutions out there. The thing I don't like about the solution in the link is that I have to change every controller to inherit from a new controller class.
http://www.asp.net/learn/MVC/tutorial-13-cs.aspx
Edit: The problem I am looking at is the fact that if I place a user control in my masterpage that relies on ViewData, I have to REPEATEDLY include that ViewData for every single page that uses said masterpage. It's possible the solution in the link above is the best solution but I was hoping there were other alternatives.
The master page already has access to the ViewData. If you want strongly typed access to it, you need to do two things:
Put the master page stuff in a base class (e.g. CommonViewData)
Have you master page inherit from the generic ViewMasterPage<> class:
" %>
Could you possibly use the OnActionExecuting method on a base controller class and populate the view data there?
Something like:
protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext context)
{
context.Controller.ViewData.Model = GetDataForControl();
}
I haven't tried it so it's just a thought...
For what it's worth, I am using the method from that tutorial in a current project and it works very well.
What you can also do, if it is data that is somewhat static (like a menu that doesn't change much), is to put the object on the cache so your database isn't called for every controller initialisation.
I usually use an abstract controller class for my MasterPage, it is the best solution, because the MasterPage is like an "abstract view". But I override the MasgerPageController View() method to include the viewdata.
protected override ViewResult View(string viewName, string masterName, object model)
{
this.ViewData["menu"] = this.PagesRepository.GetPublishPages();
return base.View(viewName, masterName, model);
}
I don't quite get your problem...
The problem I am looking at is the fact that if I place a user control in my masterpage that relies on ViewData, I have to REPEATEDLY include that ViewData for every single page that uses said masterpage.
Well yeah... of course you do. If you have a usercontrol in your master page then of course you're going to have to pass the required data for that usercontrol for every action & view that uses that masterpage.
It's not like you have to repeat yourself if you are just inheriting from a base controller.
Is your issue the fact that some controllers have actions that both do and don't call views that derive from that particular masterpage? So therefore if you are implementing a base controller, the actions that don't use that particular masterpage will still have the viewdata for it...? (If all that makes sense ;-)
I think the solution suggested does work but not the ideal solution. If we put the code in the BaseController constructor it is going to be called even for Action methods which does not have a MasterPages (e.g Post methods and Ajax methods).
I think a better solution(not ideal) is to call Html.Action method in the Master page.