Best way to call a controller action method programatically and return IActionResult?

[karthicksundararajan]

Hi folks,

I'm developing a open source CMS based on modular approach using ASP.NET Core RC2. I guess Areas are the best way to split the large application into small modules. Therefore, I've used areas as a modules in the CMS. Here, I would like to invoke the action method of a module (area).

1) In order to achieve that, I've created routing information manually and created action descriptor from that.

RouteContext context = new RouteContext(actionContext.HttpContext);
context.RouteData = new RouteData();
context.RouteData.Values.Add("area", moduleContext.ModuleInfo.Name);
context.RouteData.Values.Add("pageModuleId", moduleContext.PageModuleId);
context.RouteData.Values.Add("controller", moduleAction.ControllerName);
context.RouteData.Values.Add("action", moduleAction.ActionName);
context.RouteData.PushState(actionContext.RouteData.Routers[0], null, null)

var actionDescriptor = actionSelector.Select(context);
if (actionDescriptor == null)
throw new NullReferenceException("Action cannot be located, please check whether module has been installed properly");

var moduleActionContext = new ActionContext(actionContext.HttpContext, context.RouteData, actionDescriptor);

var invoker = moduleInvokerProvider.CreateInvoker(moduleActionContext, actionDescriptor as ControllerActionDescriptor);
var result = await invoker.InvokeAction() as ViewResult;null)

2) To invoke action and return IActionResult, I've used internal methods

var actionMethodInfo = _descriptor.MethodInfo;

var methodExecutor = _controllerActionMethodExecutor;

var arguments = ControllerActionExecutor.PrepareArguments(
_actionExecutingContext.ActionArguments,
actionMethodInfo.GetParameters());

Logger.ActionMethodExecuting(_actionExecutingContext, arguments);

var actionReturnValue = await ControllerActionExecutor.ExecuteAsync(
methodExecutor,
_actionExecutingContext.Controller,
arguments);

var actionResult = CreateActionResult(
actionMethodInfo.ReturnType,
actionReturnValue);

Logger.ActionMethodExecuted(_actionExecutingContext, actionResult);

return actionResult;

Question

The methods ControllerActionExecutor.PrepareArguments and ControllerActionExecutor.ExecuteAsync are internal methods of Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.Internal. I guess this will changed over time when new version of ASP.NET MVC is released. Is there any better way to invoke the action method and get IActionResult?

[davidfowl]

/cc @rynowak

[fromberg100]

Hi skykarthick,

did you get any better ideas?

I was also looking for a solution like yours.

Are you implementing this from a middleware? If you, could you please send me a sample?

Thanks in advance and best regards,
Fabian

[karthicksundararajan]

Hi Fabian,

Not really, unfortunately when asp.net mvc has released new version, I have to update this code completely.

I guess we need a better interface where we can call controller and get results.

Implementing from middleware would lead to re-implement most of the MVC components.

Karthick

[karthicksundararajan]

@davidfowl Should I ask this question in https://github.com/aspnet/mvc ?

[davidfowl]

Yes.