Orchard cms Html from IContent items - orchardcms

Question

My question is related to this one, but instead of changing a question I thought it Would be better to ask a new one.
I've now got a list of IContent items using the _taxonomyService.GetContentItems(term)
as suggested by #Bertrand Le Roy in the question mentioned above
But how do I turn this into a useful Html string, that I can update on the client via an ajax post?
public class HomeController : Controller
{
private readonly IOrchardServices _services;
private readonly IBlogService _blogService;
private readonly IBlogPostService _blogPostService;
private readonly IFeedManager _feedManager;
private readonly IArchiveConstraint _archiveConstraint;
private readonly ITaxonomyService _taxonomyService;
public HomeController(
IOrchardServices services,
IBlogService blogService,
IBlogPostService blogPostService,
IFeedManager feedManager,
IShapeFactory shapeFactory,
IArchiveConstraint archiveConstraint,
ITaxonomyService taxonomyService) {
_services = services;
_blogService = blogService;
_blogPostService = blogPostService;
_feedManager = feedManager;
_archiveConstraint = archiveConstraint;
T = NullLocalizer.Instance;
Shape = shapeFactory;
_taxonomyService = taxonomyService;
}
dynamic Shape { get; set; }
public Localizer T { get; set; }
public ActionResult Index()
{
return View();
}
[HttpPost]
public JsonResult ListByArchive(string path, IEnumerable<string> category)
{
try
{
// get year and month from path
path = path.ToLower().Substring(path.LastIndexOf(#"/archive/", StringComparison.Ordinal) + 9);
var date = path.Split('/');
var month = int.Parse(date[1]);
var year = int.Parse(date[0]);
// get list of terms ids from strings
var taxonomyPart = _taxonomyService.GetTaxonomyByName("Category");
var terms = category.Select(cat => _taxonomyService.GetTermByName(taxonomyPart.Id, cat)).ToList();
// get list of content items by term avoiding duplicates
var posts = new List<IContent>();
foreach (var term in terms)
{
var items = _taxonomyService.GetContentItems(term);
foreach (var item in items)
{
if (!posts.Select(p => p.Id).Contains(item.Id))
{
posts.Add(item);
}
}
}
// filter by date
var byDate = posts.Where(x =>
{
var publishedUtc = x.ContentItem.As<CommonPart>().CreatedUtc;
return
publishedUtc != null
&& publishedUtc.Value.Month == month
&& publishedUtc.Value.Year == year;
});
....
This gets me my list of IContent, but how do I get a the html for the rendered list ?
I've tried
var range = byDate.Select(x => _services.ContentManager.BuildDisplay(x, "Summary"));
var list = Shape.List();
list.AddRange(range);
dynamic viewModel = Shape.ViewModel().ContentItems(list);
var html = View((object)viewModel);
return Json(new { html = html });
but it returns an empty view,
{"html":{"MasterName":"","Model":[],"TempData":[],"View":null,"ViewBag":{},"ViewData":[],"ViewEngineCollection":[{"HostContainer":{}}],"ViewName":""}}
I have a view called ListByArchive.cshtml, that matches the one it the orchard.blog module.
As an aside, I should be returning a partial view result, instead of a jason result, but when I change the Action result type I get a 404. result from the server.

Answer 1

This is never going to work the way you think it does:
var html = View((object)viewModel);
The easiest way to return HTML representing the content item is to:
Mark your action with ThemedAttribute, ie. [Themed(false)]
Return new ShapeResult(this, viewModel) (full view) or new ShapePartialResult(this, viewModel) (partial view) instead of Json(new { html = html })
Rendering a shape/view to string inside the action is also possible, but way more tricky.
EDIT: I assumed you already have /Views/ViewModel.cshtml file in place. Like Bertrand Le Roy noted below - if it's not there, you need to add one to be able to create a shape using Shape.ViewModel().