Rendering Partial View from C#

Rendering Partial View from Inside a Controller Action in C#:

Sometimes I find a need to a rendered HTML string from inside an action (a response to AJAX call for example).

The RenderPartialView function below assumes it's a member method of a class derived from the System.Web.Mvc.Controller class.

Function description: Renders the partial view and returns the generated Html. I think it's easier than returning the raw data and having jQuery generates the HTML. Params: partialViewFullPath - The path and extension to the partial view. for example, ~/Views/Controller/ViewName.cshtml    model - Almost always we expect a model Returns: HTML string generated by the the MVC framework itself.

   
public string RenderPartialView(string partialViewFullPath, object model){
    /* to avoid null ref exception when unit testing */
    if (HttpContext == null || HttpContext.Request == null)
    {
        return string.Empty;
    }
    if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(partialViewFullPath))
    {
        throw new ArgumentException("partialViewName");
    }
    ViewDataDictionary viewData = new ViewDataDictionary(model);
    var razorView = new RazorView(this.ControllerContext, partialViewFullPath
    , null, false, new string[] { "cshtml" });
    var sb = new StringBuilder();
    using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter(sb))
    {
        using (HtmlTextWriter tw = new HtmlTextWriter(sw))
        {
            ViewContext viewContext = new ViewContext(this.ControllerContext
                            ,razorView,viewData, this.TempData, tw);
            razorView.Render(viewContext, tw);
        }
    }
    return sb.ToString();
}

The RenderPartialView function can be called as the following example code shows

        
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult SomeAction(int id)
{
    ///...
    var result = new AjaxReturnObjectModel();
    result.Success = true;
    result.Html = RenderPartialView("~/Views/Controller/PartialView.cshtml", model);
    return Json(result, JsonRequestBehavior.DenyGet);
}

Hope this helps.