RazorRender

RazorRender is a test/demo ASP.NET Core project that demonstrates two approaches for rendering Razor views and templates to HTML, suitable for scenarios like generating email content.

Features

• Razor View Rendering: Renders standard Razor .cshtml views using the built-in ASP.NET Core view engine.
• RazorLight Rendering: Renders Razor templates from source strings using the RazorLight library, which is useful for dynamic or file-based templates outside the MVC pipeline.
• API Endpoints: Exposes two endpoints to render a sample email template using both approaches.
• Swagger UI: Integrated for easy API testing and exploration.

Approaches Used

1. ASP.NET Core Razor View Engine

• Uses the default MVC view engine to render a .cshtml file (Views/Emails/Welcome.cshtml) to an HTML string.
• The ViewRenderService handles the rendering by creating an ActionContext and using IRazorViewEngine.
• Endpoint: GET /api/email/razor

2. RazorLight Engine

• Uses the RazorLight library to compile and render Razor templates from source strings.
• The template source is loaded from the file system (Views/Emails/Welcome.cshtml) and rendered with a model.
• Endpoint: GET /api/email/razor-light

Project Structure

• Controllers/EmailController.cs: API endpoints for rendering emails.
• Services/: Contains services for view rendering, template loading, and RazorLight integration.
• Views/Emails/Welcome.cshtml: Sample Razor view/template for email.
• Models/EmailModel.cs: Model used for rendering the email template.

How to Run

1. Build and run the project.
2. Open Swagger UI at /swagger to test the endpoints.
3. Use /api/email/razor to render using the built-in Razor engine.
4. Use /api/email/razor-light to render using RazorLight.

Use Cases

• Email template rendering
• Comparing Razor view engine and RazorLight
• Learning about view rendering in ASP.NET Core

Notes

You can implement a custom ITemplateSourceService to retrieve Razor template sources from a database instead of the file system. This allows dynamic template management and storage. To do this:

• Create a new implementation of ITemplateSourceService that queries your database for the template content by name or key.
• Register your implementation in Startup.cs or Program.cs using dependency injection.
• Update your services or controllers to use the new service as needed.

This approach enables storing and editing templates in a database, supporting scenarios like user-customizable templates or admin-managed content.

---

This project is for demonstration and testing purposes.

Copyright (c) 2025 Serhiy Krasovskyy xhunter74@gmail.com