asp.net - Convert IHtmlContent/TagBuilder to string in C#

Question

I am using ASP.NET 5. I need to convert IHtmlContent to String

IIHtmlContent is part of the ASP.NET 5 Microsoft.AspNet.Html.Abstractions namespace and is an interface that TagBuilder implements

Simplified I have the following method

public static IHtmlContent GetContent()
{
    return new HtmlString("<tag>blah</tag>");
}

When I reference it

string output = GetContent().ToString();

I get the following output for GetContent()

"Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Rendering.TagBuilder" 

and not

<tag>blah</tag>

which I want

I also tried using StringBuilder

StringBuilder html = new StringBuilder();
html.Append(GetContent());

but it also appends the same namespace and not the string value

I tried to cast it to TagBuilder

TagBuilder content = (TagBuilder)GetContent();

but TagBuilder doesn't have a method that converts to string

How do I convert IHtmlContent or TagBuilder to a string?

Answer 1

If all you need to do is output the contents as a string, just add this method and pass your IHtmlContent object as a parameter to get the string output:

public static string GetString(IHtmlContent content)
{
    using (var writer = new System.IO.StringWriter())
    {        
        content.WriteTo(writer, HtmlEncoder.Default);
        return writer.ToString();
    } 
}