call a regular MVC controller method from a webapi2 service

Question

Given an MVC controller method, that builds and returns a PDF.

    [HttpGet]
    [Route("pdf/{acc}/{sign}")]
    public async Task<ActionResult> Download(string acc, string sign)
    {
        ... // omitted some irrelevant detail.
        var html = this.View("Letter", model).Capture(this.ControllerContext);
        byte[] pdf = this.CreatePdfFromHtml(html);
        return this.File(binary, "application/pdf", file);
    }

The Capture extension method captures the html output, which is then returned as a file.

I need to execute the above method (or something close) in the below webapi2 method. I need the credentials and other login state to be present. The webapi and MVC requests are within the same application that uses cookies for security.

    [HttpPost]
    [Route("generate")]
    public int Generate(MyRequestModel request)
    {
        byte[] pdf = ... // how do i get the file above??
    }

Chris Pratt · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-17 14:48:24Z

You should either request the MVC action via HttpClient or simply factor out the PDF creation into a helper class that both your MVC and Web Api actions can reference.

With the first method, you would need to some how authenticate the request, which is going to be a bit difficult to do with an MVC action. MVC uses a multi-step authorization: sign in, verify, set cookie, redirect. You would have to follow those same steps in order to get a cookie set via HttpClient. Think of it as a little mini-browser. Web Api, on the other hand, simply accepts an Authorization header, since API requests are idempotent.

The easiest and most straight-forward route, especially since both your MVC and Web Api reside in the same application, would be to simply factor out the PDF creation code into a helper class. Your MVC and Web Api actions, then, can simply just call some method on that class to get the PDF, reducing code duplication.

Thanks Chris - problem is that's the PDF is generated by capturing HTML from an mvc view, so factoring out the PDF generation code is exactly the problem. I might have to go with creating a client - which does seem like a lot of hoops....
I think I will just call a regular MVC method from angular, it's really just for consistency that I want to use webapi.

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