Maybe I am asking this wrong. Virtualpathprovider allows me to render a view as a string. The issue with this, is I want to render my layout page from a different project. This said view, has many different routes and scripts and css style, is in a live version of the website and I would like to be able to show a preview without having to add the same routes and scripts and pretty much every file into my administration project.

Here is what I have so far, but I am lost as how to load my layout this way.

using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Web;
using System.Web.Hosting;

namespace VirtualPathProviderExample.Core {
	public class ExampleVirtualPathProvider : VirtualPathProvider {
		private readonly string testAspxContent = "<%@ Page Language=\"C#\" MasterPageFile=\"~/Views/Shared/Site.Master\" Inherits=\"System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage\" %><asp:Content ID=\"indexTitle\" ContentPlaceHolderID=\"TitleContent\" runat=\"server\">Test Page</asp:Content><asp:Content ID=\"indexContent\" ContentPlaceHolderID=\"MainContent\" runat=\"server\"><h2><%= Html.Encode(ViewData[\"Message\"]) %></h2><br /><p>This is file by the name of <strong>~/Views/Home/Test.aspx</strong></p><p>This is a page that does not exist in anywhere but still it's there :D by means of VirtualPathProvider.</p></asp:Content>";
		List<VirtualFile> virtualFiles = new List<VirtualFile>();

		public ExampleVirtualPathProvider() {
			virtualFiles.Add(new SimpleVirtualFile("~/Views/Home/Test.aspx", testAspxContent));
		}

		public override bool FileExists(string virtualPath) {
			List<VirtualFile> files = (from f in virtualFiles where f.VirtualPath.Equals(virtualPath) select f).ToList();
			if (files.Count > 0)
				return true;
			else
				return base.FileExists(virtualPath);
		}

		private class SimpleVirtualFile : VirtualFile {
			private string content;

			public SimpleVirtualFile(string filename, string content)
				: base(filename) {
				this.content = content;
			}

			public override Stream Open() {
				ASCIIEncoding encoding = new ASCIIEncoding();
				return new MemoryStream(encoding.GetBytes(content), false);
			}
		}

		public override VirtualFile GetFile(string virtualPath) {
			List<VirtualFile> files = (from f in virtualFiles where f.VirtualPath.Equals(virtualPath) select f).ToList();
			if (files.Count > 0) {
				return files[0];
			} else
				return base.GetFile(virtualPath);
		}

		
		public override bool DirectoryExists(string virtualDir) {
			return base.DirectoryExists(virtualDir);
		}

		public override VirtualDirectory GetDirectory(string virtualDir) {
			return base.GetDirectory(virtualDir);
		}
	}
}

I guess, long story short, I should probably wire up the site to accept parameters on some authenticated section of the site.

I certain cannot do this because I get a virtualpath error.

@model SF.Library.WebContent.ContentPageEdit
@{
    //ViewBag.Title = TempData["title"].ToString() + System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AppendAllPageTitles"].ToString();
    Layout = "http://www.mysite.com/views/shared/_layout.cshtml";
}
@{
    ViewBag.Title = "Preview";
}

<h2>Preview</h2>

<div class="faq">
    @{
        var displayMessage = TempData["DisplayMessage"];
        if (displayMessage != null)
        {
            if (displayMessage.ToString().ToLower().Contains("error"))
            {
        <div>
            <p>
                <font color="red">@displayMessage</font></p>
        </div>
            }
            else
            {
        
        <div>
            <p>@displayMessage</p>
        </div>
            }
        }    
    }
    @Html.Raw(HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(@Model.ContentBody))
</div>