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

To repeat from a more unknown question, take a look at MvcIntegrationTestFramework.

It makes saves you writing your own helpers to stream result and is proven to work well enough. I'd assume this would be in a test project and as a bonus you would have the other testing capabilities once you've got this setup. Main bother would probably be sorting out the dependency chain.

 private static readonly string mvcAppPath = 
     Path.GetFullPath(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory 
     + "\\..\\..\\..\\MyMvcApplication");
 private readonly AppHost appHost = new AppHost(mvcAppPath);

    [Test]
    public void Root_Url_Renders_Index_View()
    {
        appHost.SimulateBrowsingSession(browsingSession => {
            RequestResult result = browsingSession.ProcessRequest("");
            Assert.IsTrue(result.ResponseText.Contains("