How to render an ASP.NET MVC view as a string?

This works for me:

public virtual string RenderView(ViewContext viewContext)
{
    var response = viewContext.HttpContext.Response;
    response.Flush();
    var oldFilter = response.Filter;
    Stream filter = null;
    try
    {
        filter = new MemoryStream();
        response.Filter = filter;
        viewContext.View.Render(viewContext, viewContext.HttpContext.Response.Output);
        response.Flush();
        filter.Position = 0;
        var reader = new StreamReader(filter, response.ContentEncoding);
        return reader.ReadToEnd();
    }
    finally
    {
        if (filter != null)
        {
            filter.Dispose();
        }
        response.Filter = oldFilter;
    }
}

I found a new solution that renders a view to string without having to mess with the Response stream of the current HttpContext (which doesn't allow you to change the response's ContentType or other headers).

Basically, all you do is create a fake HttpContext for the view to render itself:

/// <summary>Renders a view to string.</summary>
public static string RenderViewToString(this Controller controller,
                                        string viewName, object viewData) {
    //Create memory writer
    var sb = new StringBuilder();
    var memWriter = new StringWriter(sb);

    //Create fake http context to render the view
    var fakeResponse = new HttpResponse(memWriter);
    var fakeContext = new HttpContext(HttpContext.Current.Request, fakeResponse);
    var fakeControllerContext = new ControllerContext(
        new HttpContextWrapper(fakeContext),
        controller.ControllerContext.RouteData,
        controller.ControllerContext.Controller);

    var oldContext = HttpContext.Current;
    HttpContext.Current = fakeContext;

    //Use HtmlHelper to render partial view to fake context
    var html = new HtmlHelper(new ViewContext(fakeControllerContext,
        new FakeView(), new ViewDataDictionary(), new TempDataDictionary()),
        new ViewPage());
    html.RenderPartial(viewName, viewData);

    //Restore context
    HttpContext.Current = oldContext;    

    //Flush memory and return output
    memWriter.Flush();
    return sb.ToString();
}

/// <summary>Fake IView implementation used to instantiate an HtmlHelper.</summary>
public class FakeView : IView {
    #region IView Members

    public void Render(ViewContext viewContext, System.IO.TextWriter writer) {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    #endregion
}

This works on ASP.NET MVC 1.0, together with ContentResult, JsonResult, etc. (changing Headers on the original HttpResponse doesn't throw the "Server cannot set content type after HTTP headers have been sent" exception).

Update: in ASP.NET MVC 2.0 RC, the code changes a bit because we have to pass in the StringWriter used to write the view into the ViewContext:

//...

//Use HtmlHelper to render partial view to fake context
var html = new HtmlHelper(
    new ViewContext(fakeControllerContext, new FakeView(),
        new ViewDataDictionary(), new TempDataDictionary(), memWriter),
    new ViewPage());
html.RenderPartial(viewName, viewData);

//...

Additional tip for ASP NET CORE:

Interface:

public interface IViewRenderer
{
  Task<string> RenderAsync<TModel>(Controller controller, string name, TModel model);
}

Implementation:

public class ViewRenderer : IViewRenderer
{
  private readonly IRazorViewEngine viewEngine;

  public ViewRenderer(IRazorViewEngine viewEngine) => this.viewEngine = viewEngine;

  public async Task<string> RenderAsync<TModel>(Controller controller, string name, TModel model)
  {
    ViewEngineResult viewEngineResult = this.viewEngine.FindView(controller.ControllerContext, name, false);

    if (!viewEngineResult.Success)
    {
      throw new InvalidOperationException(string.Format("Could not find view: {0}", name));
    }

    IView view = viewEngineResult.View;
    controller.ViewData.Model = model;

    await using var writer = new StringWriter();
    var viewContext = new ViewContext(
       controller.ControllerContext,
       view,
       controller.ViewData,
       controller.TempData,
       writer,
       new HtmlHelperOptions());

       await view.RenderAsync(viewContext);

       return writer.ToString();
  }
}

Registration in Startup.cs

...
 services.AddSingleton<IViewRenderer, ViewRenderer>();
...

And usage in controller:

public MyController: Controller
{
  private readonly IViewRenderer renderer;
  public MyController(IViewRendere renderer) => this.renderer = renderer;
  public async Task<IActionResult> MyViewTest
  {
    var view = await this.renderer.RenderAsync(this, "MyView", model);
    return new OkObjectResult(view);
  }
}

I am using MVC 1.0 RTM and none of the above solutions worked for me. But this one did:

Public Function RenderView(ByVal viewContext As ViewContext) As String

    Dim html As String = ""

    Dim response As HttpResponse = HttpContext.Current.Response

    Using tempWriter As New System.IO.StringWriter()

        Dim privateMethod As MethodInfo = response.GetType().GetMethod("SwitchWriter", BindingFlags.NonPublic Or BindingFlags.Instance)

        Dim currentWriter As Object = privateMethod.Invoke(response, BindingFlags.NonPublic Or BindingFlags.Instance Or BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, Nothing, New Object() {tempWriter}, Nothing)

        Try
            viewContext.View.Render(viewContext, Nothing)
            html = tempWriter.ToString()
        Finally
            privateMethod.Invoke(response, BindingFlags.NonPublic Or BindingFlags.Instance Or BindingFlags.InvokeMethod, Nothing, New Object() {currentWriter}, Nothing)
        End Try

    End Using

    Return html

End Function

Quick tip

For a strongly typed Model just add it to the ViewData.Model property before passing to RenderViewToString. e.g

this.ViewData.Model = new OrderResultEmailViewModel(order);
string myString = RenderViewToString(this.ControllerContext, "~/Views/Order/OrderResultEmail.aspx", "~/Views/Shared/Site.Master", this.ViewData, this.TempData);

The easiest way for me was:

  public string GetFileAsString(string path)
  {
        var html = "";                        

        FileStream fileStream = new FileStream(path, FileMode.Open);

        using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(fileStream))
        {
            html += reader.ReadLine();
        }

        return html;
   }

I use this for emails and make sure that the file only contains CSS and HTML