Is it possible to load a view from a database rather than from a file on disk? It doesn't necessarily have to be a database, could be any string really.
I think I asked this question too soon...I still look forward to any answers but I will definitely do some more research first.
Edit
So I wrote a quick sample that does what I want - to a point. I'll post updates as I get everything working properly.
public class DbPathProvider : VirtualPathProvider {
public DbPathProvider() : base() {
}
public override bool FileExists(string virtualPath) {
if (virtualPath.StartsWith("/test") || virtualPath.StartsWith("~/test"))
return true;
return base.FileExists(virtualPath);
//deal with this later
}
public override VirtualFile GetFile(string virtualPath) {
if (virtualPath.StartsWith("/test") || virtualPath.StartsWith("~/test"))
return new DbVirtualFile(virtualPath);
return base.GetFile(virtualPath);
//deal with this later
}
public class DbVirtualFile : System.Web.Hosting.VirtualFile {
public DbVirtualFile(string path) : base (path) {
//deal with this later
}
public override System.IO.Stream Open() {
return new System.IO.MemoryStream(System.Text.ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes("this is a test"));
}
}
}
Update
After playing around with it I found something interesting. If I remove the return base...
from the FileExists()
and GetFile()
methods and only return true & my DbVirtualFile
the returned file is parsed and output is as expected. (Such as if I put <%:DateTime.Now.ToString()%>
) - however it doesn't when I add the tests and the base returns it just outputs a literal string of whatever is in my DbVirtualFile (god I hope this makes sense) - any thoughts out there?
Final
It works. I just didn't add the inherits to the page I was testing. In this case: @inherits System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage<dynamic>
Hope this helps someone else out there trying to do the same thing.