Render Razor View or Partial to String

[wessleym]

Summary

I recently wanted to render a Razor page or partial to a string programmatically, and I've written a pretty good way to get it done by combining several solutions I've seen around the Web and testing them for performance. I'd like to contribute my solution to ASP.NET Core. It's an extension to HttpContext since it requires HttpContext's RequestServices.

Motivation and goals

This allows me to render a Razor partial to a string. It's especially useful for outputting HTML to be emailed.

In scope

Email a Razor view

Out of scope

Unknown

Risks / unknowns

1. Is this an appropriate addition to ASP.NET Core? It's OK if it isn't. I just wanted to offer to contribute.
2. I can never get this code to work for a .cshtml with @page at the top. It only seems to work with partials (no @page). Specifically, Model is null on the .cshtml page if it contains @page at the top. Again, this does not occur when no @page is at the top. I would like someone to provide a suggestion about that please.

Examples

It is invoked like this:
string html = await HttpContext.RenderViewAsync("Pages/SomePage.cshtml", new SomePageModel("X"), isMainPage: false);

I've attached the source code file. I couldn't attach a plain .cs file because GitHub apparently does not allow them to be uploaded in an issue.
ViewRendererHttpContextExtensions.zip

[mkArtakMSFT]

Thanks for contacting us.
It's great to see community building our their solutions for solving such problems. We think this would be a better fit to stay as a community project, rather be part of the framework.

[wessleym]

@mkArtakMSFT, OK. Thanks.
If anyone ever comes looking for this feature, you can try this out:
https://github.com/wessleym/WessleyMitchell.Web.DotNetCore.ViewRenderer