java - How to manually render Spring MVC view to html?

Question

Is it possible to render my view into html in my controller mapping method, so that i can return the rendered html as a part of my json object ?

Example of my usual controller method :

@RequestMapping(value={"/accounts/{accountId}"}, method=RequestMethod.GET)
public String viewAcc(final HttpServletRequest req, 
        final HttpServletResponse resp, final Model model,
        @PathVariable("accountId") final String docId) {

    // do usual processing ...

    // return only a STRING value, 
    //   which will be used by spring MVC to resolve into myview.jsp or myview.ftl
    //   and populate the model to the template to result in html
    return "myview";
}

What i expect :

@RequestMapping(value={"/accounts/{accountId}"}, method=RequestMethod.GET)
public String viewAcc(final HttpServletRequest req, 
        final HttpServletResponse resp, final Model model,
        @PathVariable("accountId") final String docId) {

    // do usual processing ...

    // manually create the view
    ModelAndView view = ... ? (how)

    // translate the view to the html
    //   and get the rendered html from the view
    String renderedHtml = view.render .. ? (how)

    // create a json containing the html
    String jsonString = "{ 'html' : " + escapeForJson(renderedHtml) + "}"

    try {
        out = response.getWriter();
        out.write(jsonString);
    } catch (IOException e) {
        // handle the exception somehow
    }

    return null;
}

I wonder what is the right way to create the view and render the view into html manually within the controller method.

Update

Here's the working example from the accepted answer's guidance :

View resolvedView = thiz.viewResolver.resolveViewName("myViewName", Locale.US);
MockHttpServletResponse mockResp = new MockHttpServletResponse();
resolvedView.render(model.asMap(), req, mockResp);
System.out.println("rendered html : " + mockResp.getContentAsString());

Answer 1

Try autowiring the ViewResolver then calling resolveViewName("myview", Locale.US) to get the View.

Then call render() on the view, passing it a "mock" HTTP response that has a ByteArrayOutputStream for its output, and get the HTML from the ByteArrayOutputStream.

Update

Here's the working example, copied from the question. (so the code is actually with the answer)

View resolvedView = thiz.viewResolver.resolveViewName("myViewName", Locale.US);
MockHttpServletResponse mockResp = new MockHttpServletResponse();
resolvedView.render(model.asMap(), req, mockResp);
System.out.println("rendered html : " + mockResp.getContentAsString());