Where are the ControllerContext and ViewEngines properties in MVC 6 Controller?

Question

I've created a new MVC6 project and building a new site. The goal is to get the rendered result of a view. I found the following code, but I can't get it to work because I can't find the ControllerContext and the ViewEngines.

Here is the code I want to rewrite:

protected string RenderPartialViewToString(string viewName, object model)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(viewName))
        viewName = ControllerContext.RouteData.GetRequiredString("action");

    ViewData.Model = model;

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

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

Solution 1

Update: I'm updating this to work with .Net Core 2.x as the APIs have changed since 2015!

First of all we can leverage the built in dependency injection that comes with ASP.Net MVC Core which will give us the ICompositeViewEngine object we need to render our views manually. So for example, a controller would look like this:

public class MyController : Controller
{
    private ICompositeViewEngine _viewEngine;

    public MyController(ICompositeViewEngine viewEngine)
    {
        _viewEngine = viewEngine;
    }

    //Rest of the controller code here
}

Next, the code we actually need to render a view. Note that is is now an async method as we will be making asynchronous calls internally:

private async Task<string> RenderPartialViewToString(string viewName, object model)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(viewName))
        viewName = ControllerContext.ActionDescriptor.ActionName;

    ViewData.Model = model;

    using (var writer = new StringWriter())
    {
        ViewEngineResult viewResult = 
            _viewEngine.FindView(ControllerContext, viewName, false);

        ViewContext viewContext = new ViewContext(
            ControllerContext, 
            viewResult.View, 
            ViewData, 
            TempData, 
            writer, 
            new HtmlHelperOptions()
        );

        await viewResult.View.RenderAsync(viewContext);

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

And to call the method, it's as simple as this:

public async Task<IActionResult> Index()
{
    var model = new TestModel
    {
        SomeProperty = "whatever"
    }

    var renderedView = await RenderPartialViewToString("NameOfView", model);

    //Do what you want with the renderedView here

    return View();
}

Solution 2

The released dotnet core 1.0 has changed, this version of the above code works with 1.0 RTM.

protected string RenderPartialViewToString(string viewName, object model)
{
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(viewName))
        viewName = ControllerContext.ActionDescriptor.DisplayName;

    ViewData.Model = model;

    using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter())
    {
        var engine = _serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(ICompositeViewEngine)) as ICompositeViewEngine; // Resolver.GetService(typeof(ICompositeViewEngine)) as ICompositeViewEngine;
        ViewEngineResult viewResult = engine.FindView(ControllerContext, viewName, false);

        ViewContext viewContext = new ViewContext(
            ControllerContext,
            viewResult.View,
            ViewData,
            TempData,
            sw,
            new HtmlHelperOptions() //Added this parameter in
        );

        //Everything is async now!
        var t = viewResult.View.RenderAsync(viewContext);
        t.Wait();

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

These usings are required for this code to compile:

using System.IO;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ViewEngines;
using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ViewFeatures;

I also had to add a DI interfaces to the controller constructor:

IServiceProvider serviceProvider

My account constructor looks like this now:

public AccountController(
    UserManager<ApplicationUser> userManager,
    SignInManager<ApplicationUser> signInManager,
    IEmailSender emailSender,
    ISmsSender smsSender,
    ILoggerFactory loggerFactory,
    IServiceProvider serviceProvider)
{
    _userManager = userManager;
    _signInManager = signInManager;
    _emailSender = emailSender;
    _smsSender = smsSender;
    _logger = loggerFactory.CreateLogger<AccountController>();
    _serviceProvider = serviceProvider;
}

Solution 3

The solution provided by Martin Tomes worked for me but I had to replace:

ViewEngineResult viewResult = engine.FindView(ControllerContext, viewName, false);

with

ViewEngineResult viewResult = engine.GetView(_env.WebRootPath, viewName, false);

Also in controller constructor had to add

private IHostingEnvironment _env;

public AccountController(IHostingEnvironment env)
{
    _env = env;
}

Solution 4

Solution by Martin Tomes works well. My changes: removed serviceProvider and get ICompositeViewEngine in constructor via DI. Constructor looks like:

private readonly ICompositeViewEngine _viewEngine;

        public AccountController(

                UserManager<ApplicationUser> userManager,
                SignInManager<ApplicationUser> signInManager,
                IEmailSender emailSender,
                ISmsSender smsSender,
                ILoggerFactory loggerFactory,
                ICompositeViewEngine viewEngine)
            {
                _userManager = userManager;
                _signInManager = signInManager;
                _emailSender = emailSender;
                _smsSender = smsSender;
                _logger = loggerFactory.CreateLogger<AccountController>();
                _viewEngine = viewEngine;;
            }

and put

ViewEngineResult viewResult = _viewEngine.FindView(ControllerContext, viewName, false);

instead of

var engine = _serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(ICompositeViewEngine)) as ICompositeViewEngine; // Resolver.GetService(typeof(ICompositeViewEngine)) as ICompositeViewEngine;
ViewEngineResult viewResult = engine.FindView(ControllerContext, viewName, false);

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