I've got the following filter in place on an action to capture the HTML output, convert it to a string, do some operations to modify the string, and return a ContentResult with the new string. Unfortunately, I keep ending up with an empty string.
private class UpdateFilter : ActionFilterAttribute
{
private Stream stream;
public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
{
stream = filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Filter;
stream = new MemoryStream();
filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Filter = stream;
}
public override void OnResultExecuted(ResultExecutedContext filterContext)
{
StreamReader responsereader = new StreamReader(filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Filter); //empty stream? why?
responsereader.BaseStream.Position = 0;
string response = responsereader.ReadToEnd();
ContentResult contres = new ContentResult();
contres.Content = response;
filterContext.Result = contres;
}
}
I've pinned down that StreamReader(stream).ReadToEnd() returns an empty string, but I can't figure out why.
Any ideas how to fix this?
EDIT: I've changed the OnActionExecuted to OnResultExecuted, and now it is called after the View has been generated, but the stream is still empty!
I solved this by hijacking the HttpWriter, and having it write into a StringBuilder
rather than the response, and then doing whatever needs to be done to/with the response before writing it to the output.
private class UpdateFilter : ActionFilterAttribute
{
private HtmlTextWriter tw;
private StringWriter sw;
private StringBuilder sb;
private HttpWriter output;
public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
{
sb = new StringBuilder();
sw = new StringWriter(sb);
tw = new HtmlTextWriter(sw);
output = (HttpWriter)filterContext.RequestContext.HttpContext.Response.Output;
filterContext.RequestContext.HttpContext.Response.Output = tw;
}
public override void OnResultExecuted(ResultExecutedContext filterContext)
{
string response = sb.ToString();
//response processing
output.Write(response);
}
}
Try rewinding the stream to the beginning by setting Position = 0;
before you read it.
public override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)
{
stream.Position = 0;
string response = new StreamReader(stream).ReadToEnd();
ContentResult contres = new ContentResult();
contres.Content = response;
filterContext.Result = contres;
}
I think I've developed a pretty good way to do this.
- Replace the Reponse Filter with a custom one
- This filter takes a delegate to an abstract method which takes a stream
- This the delegate, and hence the abstract method are called on the close of the stream, i.e. when all the HTML is available
- Override the
OnClose
method and play with the stream as you like.
public abstract class ReadOnlyActionFilterAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
private delegate void ReadOnlyOnClose(Stream stream);
public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
{
filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Filter = new OnCloseFilter(
filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Filter,
this.OnClose);
base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
}
protected abstract void OnClose(Stream stream);
private class OnCloseFilter : MemoryStream
{
private readonly Stream stream;
private readonly ReadOnlyOnClose onClose;
public OnCloseFilter(Stream stream, ReadOnlyOnClose onClose)
{
this.stream = stream;
this.onClose = onClose;
}
public override void Close()
{
this.Position = 0;
this.onClose(this);
this.Position = 0;
this.CopyTo(this.stream);
base.Close();
}
}
}
You can then derive from this to another attribute to access the stream and get the HTML:
public class MyAttribute : ReadOnlyActionFilterAttribute
{
protected override void OnClose(Stream stream)
{
var html = new HtmlDocument();
html.Load(stream);
// play with html
}
}
Can you verify that stream is not NULL in the OnActionExectuted-method? I'm not sure the state of the stream-variable is being stored through the process..
Why don't you try to get the stream out of the filterContext:
public override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)
{
var stream = filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Filter;
string response = new StreamReader(stream).ReadToEnd();
ContentResult contres = new ContentResult();
contres.Content = response;
filterContext.Result = contres;
}