ASP.NET MVC - controller action method from console application

Question

I want to have an console application that I would use to render the output to a file.

Pseudocode:

ComponentBaseController controller = new ComponentBaseController();
SaveToFile("output.html", controller.Result);

I am not using real code here since I have tried different approaches, but nothing gets me near.

The closest I got using Tip # 25 from Stephen Walther, is this:

ComponentBaseController controller = new ComponentBaseController();

RouteData routeData = new RouteData();
routeData.Values.Add("controller", "ComponentBase");

var fakeContext = new FakeControllerContext(controller, routeData);

var result = controller.Details("klasta7") as PartialViewResult;
result.ExecuteResult(fakeContext);
Console.Write(fakeContext.HttpContext.Response.ToString());

This throws an System.InvalidOperationException that the partial view could not be found. Tried different locations for Views folder, but no luck.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Answer 1

It is going to be tricky to get stuff to render without hosting the app in something as there is no HttpContext, etc.

Now, using WebRequest to grab pages from a running version of the app and dumping them to disk is a bit more doable.

Finally, this sounds a bit FUBAR. What is the goal of this operation?

Answer 2

I'm not one to try to recommend something other than what you're asking to do, but I agree with Wyatt, the goal seems a little on the sticky side, and at best is going to create some code smell. If you simply need to save the rendered output to a file, I think it'd be easier to have an app service that gets called when you need to do the save, likely from the controller. In that event, you'd have access to a current HttpContext, Routes, etc.

If it's a separate app altogether (the console app exists on it's own), what about setting up a service from within the web app that has a method the console app could call to retrieve the rendered output?