Here's what I came up with, and it's working for me. I added the following method(s) to my controller base class. (You can always make these static methods somewhere else that accept a controller as a parameter I suppose)
MVC2 .ascx style
protected string RenderViewToString<T>(string viewPath, T model) {
ViewData.Model = model;
using (var writer = new StringWriter()) {
var view = new WebFormView(viewPath);
var vdd = new ViewDataDictionary<T>(model);
var viewCxt = new ViewContext(ControllerContext, view, vdd,
new TempDataDictionary(), writer);
viewCxt.View.Render(viewCxt, writer);
return writer.ToString();
}
}
Razor .cshtml style
public string RenderRazorViewToString(string viewName, object model)
{
ViewData.Model = model;
using (var sw = new StringWriter())
{
var viewResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(ControllerContext,
viewName);
var viewContext = new ViewContext(ControllerContext, viewResult.View,
ViewData, TempData, sw);
viewResult.View.Render(viewContext, sw);
viewResult.ViewEngine.ReleaseView(ControllerContext, viewResult.View);
return sw.GetStringBuilder().ToString();
}
}
Edit: added Razor code.
