Question

I have a web app that displays a table the user can edit. In the process of editing, various inner HTML of the original table gets replaced with edits made by the user. Once the user is finished I would like to save the resulting table in a .html file so that I can include it in a PowerPoint slide without having to recreate it. Basically I want to capture the .aspx file as is after editing and write this to a file.

Any advice is appreciated.

Regards.

Answer 1

Basically I want to capture the .aspx file as is

Because you state “capture the ASPX”, I’m assuming the data edits are persisted somewhere (memory/database). This means it is straightforward to override the Render() method of the control/page and redirect (or copy) the output stream to a file.

Example

protected override void Render( HtmlTextWriter writer ) {
    using( HtmlTextWriter htmlwriter = new HtmlTextWriter( new StringWriter() ) ) {

        base.Render( htmlwriter );
        string renderedContent = htmlwriter.InnerWriter.ToString();

        // do something here with the string, like save to disk
        File.WriteAllText( @"c:\temp\foo.html", renderedContent );

        // you could also Response.BinaryWrite() the data to the client 
        // so that it could be saved on the user's machine.

        // and/or write it out to the output stream as well
        writer.Write( renderedContent );
    }
}

Sequence

• User enters data
• You store the results somewhere
• You re-render the control with the most recent content
• Capture the output of the control and write it out to a file