ASP.NET MVC Using Render Partial from Within an Html Helper

Question

I have an HtmlHelper extension that currently returns a string using a string builder and a fair amount of complex logic. I now want to add something extra to it that is taken from a render partial call, something like this ...

public static string MyHelper(this HtmlHelper helper)
{
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    builder.Append("Hi There");
    builder.Append(RenderPartial("MyPartialView"));
    builder.Append("Bye!");
    return builder.ToString();
}

Now of course RenderPartial renders directly to the response so this doesn;t work and I've tried several solutions for rendering partials to strings but the all seem to fall over one I use the HtmlHelper within that partial.

Is this possible?

frank hadder · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-21 02:08:04Z

68

Because this question, although old and marked answered, showed up in google, I'm going to give a different answer.

In asp.net mvc 2 and 3, there's an Html.Partial(...) method that works like RenderPartial but returns the partial view as a string instead of rendering it directly.

Your example thus becomes:

//using System.Web.Mvc.Html;
public static string MyHelper(this HtmlHelper helper)
{
    StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder();
    builder.Append("Hi There");
    builder.Append(helper.Partial("MyPartialView"));
    builder.Append("Bye!");
    return builder.ToString();
}

answered Mar 21, 2011 at 2:08

frank hadder

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1 Comment

Will Wu Over a year ago

Works perfectly, I'd like to highlight this line: using System.Web.Mvc.Html.

SharpC · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-21 15:55:35Z

0

I found the accepted answer printed out the viewable HTML on the page in ASP.NET MVC5 with for example:

@Html.ShowSomething(Model.MySubModel, "some text")

So I found the way to render it properly was to return an MvcHtmlString:

public static MvcHtmlString ShowSomething(this HtmlHelper helper, 
      MySubModel subModel, string someText)
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(someText);

    sb.Append(helper.Partial("_SomeOtherPartialView", subModel);

    return new MvcHtmlString(sb.ToString());
}

answered Jan 21, 2020 at 15:55

SharpC

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Comments

Jarrett Meyer · Accepted Answer · 2010-01-18 13:52:47Z

-2

You shouldn't be calling partials from a helper. Helpers "help" your views, and not much else. Check out the RenderAction method from MVCContrib (if you need it now) or MVC v2 (if you can wait a few more months). You'd be able to pass your model to a standard controller action and get back a partial result.

answered Jan 18, 2010 at 13:52

Jarrett Meyer

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1 Comment

Chris Meek Over a year ago

In some circumstances yes (probably including this one), but I try to keep my HTML in HTML like files where possible and use Html helpers to do the logic around how to combine them. This way I still get nice editor features in my html. However not using render partial is exactly what I've done in this case.

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