Question

As the title states. I have an MVC 3 Razor view which i would like to programmatically instantiate and obtain a list of it’s Html helpers.

anyone have any good suggestions on how to approach this?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I was able to achieve this by executing a custom view result and updating the model from my html helper.

Action Method:

    public ActionResult GetListViewHelpers()
    {
        var model = new TestModel(); // has >>> public List<MyHelper> Helpers { get; set; }

        var testContext = new ControllerContext();
        testContext.Controller = new MyController();
        testContext.HttpContext = HttpContext;            
        testContext.RouteData.Values["controller"] = "MyController";
        testContext.RouteData.Values["action"] = "Index";

        var view = new TestViewResult();
        view.ViewData.Model = model;
        view.ViewName = "TestView";  // i want a list of the helpers from this view          
        view.ExecuteResult(testContext);

        return View(model); // model.Helpers contains a list of helpers within a required view
    }

View Result:

public class TestViewResult : ViewResult 
{
    public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
    {
        if (context == null)            
            throw new ArgumentNullException("context");

        if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(ViewName))            
            ViewName = context.RouteData.GetRequiredString("action");

        ViewEngineResult result = null;

        if (View == null)
        {
            result = FindView(context);
            View = result.View;
        }

        var stream = new MemoryStream();
        var writer = new StreamWriter(stream);
        ViewContext viewContext = new ViewContext(context, View, ViewData, TempData, writer);

        using (stream)
        using (writer)
        {
            View.Render(viewContext, writer);
            writer.Flush();
        }

        if (result != null)            
            result.ViewEngine.ReleaseView(context, View);            
    }
}

Helper:

    public static MvcHtmlString AHelper(this HtmlHelper helper, string name)
    {
        var model = (TestModel)helper.ViewData.Model;

        if(model.Helpers == null)
            model.Helpers = new List<MyHelper>();

        model.Helpers.Add(new MyHelper()
        {
            Name = name // add all the info i want from the helpers overloads
        });

        // .... helper logic here

        return null;
    }