how to grab dynamic html and send it out with email?

Question

Suppose I have a dynamic html form generated by MVC view (database data with style sheet). Then I want to send the same html with email. For example, the result maybe is something like:

  <div id="DivForPrint">
        <fieldset>
            <legend>Hello</legend>
            <table>
                <tbody><tr>
                    <td>
                        <label for="ID">
                            ID&nbsp;#:</label>
                    </td>
                    <td>
                        <span class="displayData">
                            9
                        </span>
                    </td>
                    <td width="100%"></td>
                    <td>
                        <label>
                            Date:
                        </label>
                    </td>
                    <td width="100px">
                        <span class="displayData">
                            23/09/2009_2:28_PM
                        </span>
                    </td>
                </tr>
            </tbody></table>
        </fieldset>
    </div>

How to get it and send it out with email? even I can set something like mail.IsBodyHtml = true; but style sheet is not available when sending email out

Answer 1

You are correct. Stylesheets are not available because the vast majority of e-mail clients will not load any external content other than images. If you want styled content it should be created with inline style definitions.

I just found this pretty awesome tool which will convert style definitions and related HTML into inline style definitions.

Answer 2

I'm pretty sure you can get the output of a View by calling the ViewResult's View.Render() method and then looking at the text writer that was passed in.

This is totally just me hypothesizing though.