Read in a html page within asp.net mvc

Question

i am porting over a website from asp.

i have one page that i can't figure out how to migrate it.

The page is dynamic in the sense that it reads in other html pages and sticks the content into the main "container" page. In the middle of the asp page it has sections like below

<%
Dim fso1, f11, ts1, s1  
Const ForReading1 = 1  
Set fso1 = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")   
Set ts1 = fso1.OpenTextFile("" & Server.MapPath("newsletters/welcome.html") & "",     ForReading)  
s1 = ts1.ReadAll  
Response.Write s1  
ts1.Close  
set fso1 = nothing  
set f11 = nothing  
set ts1 = nothing  
set s1 = nothing  
%>

Any suggestions in ASP.net MVC for best way to read in other html pages and stick them into a page view.

Answer 1

I assume that these are HTML fragments, not full pages. You could convert them to partial views -- pretty trivial, you just add the correct page directive and rename to .ascx. Then you would use Html.RenderPartial to include the partial in your main view. Another way would be to create your own HtmlHelper extension that works like RenderPartial but simply reads the named file and writes it to the response just like you are currently doing.

Ex1:

 <% Html.RenderPartial( "welcome.ascx" ); %>

Ex2:

 <% Html.RenderHtml(  Server.MapPath( "newletters/welcome.html" ) ); %>

Note that in the first case the view file needs to live in the Views directory. In the second case, you can reference the file from anywhere that the worker process has read access. You'll need to create the second method yourself. Perhaps something similar to:

 public static class MyHtmlHelperExtensions
 {
      public static void RenderHtml( this HtmlHelper helper, string path )
      {
           var reader = new StreamReader( path );
           var contents = reader.ReadToEnd();
           helper.ViewContext.HttpContext.Response.Write( contents );
      }
  }

Please note that you'll have to add error handling.

Answer 2

To read the contents of a text file in .Net, use the File.ReadAllText method.

The exact equivalent of your code snippet would be

<%= File.ReadAllText(Server.MapPath("newsletters/welcome.html")) %>