Using HTML content of a view rendered inside controller using Iview.Render()

HI this is an extension to my previous post Rendering a View differently without using return View() directly

In that post we saw how to render the html content of a view inside the controller using Iview.Render().

In this post i want to explain my business justification that made me to use this approach.
Why do i need html content of a view inside controller??
MyModel.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Data.Entity;
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;

namespace MvcApplication2.Models
{
    public class MyModel
    {
       
        public string firstname{set;get;}
        public string lastname{set;get;}
        public string AddressCity { set; get; }
        public string FullName { set; get; }
        public string nicknameFirstNmae { set; get; }

        public string profession { set; get; }
        public string designation { set; get; }
        public string experience { set; get; }

    }
}

I am having a view called myFirstView.cshtml. This view consists of a grid that displays MyModel class data.

myFirstView.cshtml

@{
        //Layout = null;
}
@model IEnumerable<MvcApplication2.Models.MyModel>

    <div>
@{
    List<string> ls=new List<string>();
    var grid = new WebGrid(@Model);    
}
@grid.GetHtml(
tableStyle: "webgrid",
         headerStyle: "webgrid-header",
      alternatingRowStyle: "webgrid-alternating-row",
       selectedRowStyle: "webgrid-selected-row",
             rowStyle: "webgrid-row-style"
             )
    </div>

just a preview of my rendered view

I am having a controller called FirstController. Inside this controller i am having a function called SendAndPreviewMail().

Here i am creating an object of MyModel class and then i am assigning values to properties.
I am having a class called renderView and it contains a static method called returnViewString(). That accepts object of controller,view name and model object.
In the function SendAndPreviewMail() i am creating model and then trying to render the view myFirstView.cshtml by passing controller,viewname,model to returnViewhtml().

FirstController.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Mvc;
using System.IO;
using System.Web.Mail;

namespace MvcApplication2.Controllers
{
    public class FirstController : Controller
    {
       
        public string SendAndPreviewMail()
        {
             Models.MyModel mod = new Models.MyModel();
            Models.MyModel mod1 = new Models.MyModel();
            List<Models.MyModel> lst = new List<Models.MyModel>();
            mod.AddressCity = "Vizag";
            mod.firstname = "Pavan";
            mod.lastname = "Kumar";
            mod.nicknameFirstNmae = "PavanArya";
            mod.FullName = "Pavan Kumar Aryasomayajulu";
            mod.experience = "2yrs";
            mod.designation="Associate s/w engineer";
            mod.profession="Information Technology";

            mod1.AddressCity = "Vizag";
            mod1.firstname = "Kiran";
            mod1.lastname = "Kumar";
            mod1.nicknameFirstNmae = "KiranMantri";
            mod1.FullName = "Kiran Kumar Mantri";
            mod1.experience = "3yrs";
            mod1.designation = "s/w engineer";
            mod1.profession = "Information Technology";
            lst.Add(mod);
            lst.Add(mod1);

            string result = ReturnView.returnViewString(this, "myFirstView", lst);//we get view's html content
            try
            {
                MailMessage mail = new MailMessage();
                System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "localhost";
                mail.From = "pavan.aryasomayajulu@gmail.com";
                mail.To = "pavan.aryasomayajulu@gmail.com";
                mail.Subject = "Test Mail";
                mail.BodyFormat = MailFormat.Html;
                mail.BodyEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.Default;
                mail.Body = result;

                SmtpMail.Send(mail);
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
            }
            return result;
        }

    }
    public class ReturnView
    {
        public static string returnViewString(Controller controller, String viewName, object model)
        {
            StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
            controller.ViewData.Model = model;
            ViewEngineResult viewResult = ViewEngines.Engines.FindPartialView(controller.ControllerContext, viewName);

            ViewContext viewContext = new ViewContext(controller.ControllerContext, viewResult.View, controller.ViewData, controller.TempData, sw);
            viewResult.View.Render(viewContext, sw);
            string result = sw.ToString();
            return result;
        }
    }
   
}

After getting the view’s html content we are trying to send that data(rendered html content) as a mail using SMTP server.

MailMessage mail = new MailMessage();
                System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "localhost";
                mail.From = "pavan.aryasomayajulu@gmail.com";
                mail.To = "pavan.aryasomayajulu@gmail.com";
                mail.Subject = "Test Mail";
                mail.BodyFormat = MailFormat.Html;
                mail.BodyEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.Default;
                mail.Body = result;

                SmtpMail.Send(mail);

And at the same time we are outputting the views html content to browser.

So when we enter the url “http://localhost:1427/first/SendAndPreviewMail” our code is going to send html code of the view as a mail and at the same time it outputs the rendered view onto the screen as a preview.

Thanks,
Pavan