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

Question

I want to output two different views (one as a string that will be sent as an email), and the other the page displayed to a user.

Is this possible in ASP.NET MVC bet

Answer 1

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;
    }
}