[asp.net-mvc] MVC: How to Return a String as JSON

In an effort to make a progress reporting process a little more reliable and decouple it from the request/response, I am performing the processing in a Windows Service and persisting the intended response to a file. When the client starts polling for updates, the intention is that the controller returns the contents of the file, whatever they are, as a JSON string.

The contents of the file are pre-serialized to JSON. This is to ensure that there is nothing standing in the way of the response. No processing needs to happen (short of reading the file contents into a string and returning it) to get the response.

I initially though this would be fairly simple, but it is not turning out to be the case.

Currently my controller method looks thusly:

Controller

Updated

[HttpPost]
public JsonResult UpdateBatchSearchMembers()
{
    string path = Properties.Settings.Default.ResponsePath;
    string returntext;
    if (!System.IO.File.Exists(path))
        returntext = Properties.Settings.Default.EmptyBatchSearchUpdate;
    else
        returntext = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(path);

    return this.Json(returntext);
}

And Fiddler is returning this as the raw response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: ASP.NET Development Server/10.0.0.0
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 20:30:05 GMT
X-AspNet-Version: 4.0.30319
X-AspNetMvc-Version: 3.0
Cache-Control: private
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 81
Connection: Close

"{\"StopPolling\":false,\"BatchSearchProgressReports\":[],\"MemberStatuses\":[]}"

AJAX

Updated

The following will likely be changed later, but for now this was working when I was generating the response class and returning it as JSON like a normal person.

this.CheckForUpdate = function () {
var parent = this;

if (this.BatchSearchId != null && WorkflowState.SelectedSearchList != "") {
    showAjaxLoader = false;
    if (progressPending != true) {
        progressPending = true;
        $.ajax({
            url: WorkflowState.UpdateBatchLink + "?SearchListID=" + WorkflowState.SelectedSearchList,
            type: 'POST',
            contentType: 'application/json; charset=utf-8',
            cache: false,
            success: function (data) {
                for (var i = 0; i < data.MemberStatuses.length; i++) {
                    var response = data.MemberStatuses[i];
                    parent.UpdateCellStatus(response);
                }
                if (data.StopPolling = true) {
                    parent.StopPullingForUpdates();
                }
                showAjaxLoader = true;
            }
        });
        progressPending = false;
    }
}

All answers here provide good and working code. But someone would be dissatisfied that they all use ContentType as return type and not JsonResult.

Unfortunately JsonResult is using JavaScriptSerializer without option to disable it. The best way to get around this is to inherit JsonResult.

I copied most of the code from original JsonResult and created JsonStringResult class that returns passed string as application/json. Code for this class is below

public class JsonStringResult : JsonResult
    {
        public JsonStringResult(string data)
        {
            JsonRequestBehavior = JsonRequestBehavior.DenyGet;
            Data = data;
        }

        public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
        {
            if (context == null)
            {
                throw new ArgumentNullException("context");
            }
            if (JsonRequestBehavior == JsonRequestBehavior.DenyGet &&
                String.Equals(context.HttpContext.Request.HttpMethod, "GET", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
            {
                throw new InvalidOperationException("Get request is not allowed!");
            }

            HttpResponseBase response = context.HttpContext.Response;

            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(ContentType))
            {
                response.ContentType = ContentType;
            }
            else
            {
                response.ContentType = "application/json";
            }
            if (ContentEncoding != null)
            {
                response.ContentEncoding = ContentEncoding;
            }
            if (Data != null)
            {
                response.Write(Data);
            }
        }
    }

Example usage:

var json = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(data);
return new JsonStringResult(json);

Use the following code in your controller:

return Json(new { success = string }, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);

and in JavaScript:

success: function (data) {
    var response = data.success;
    ....
}

You just need to return standard ContentResult and set ContentType to "application/json". You can create custom ActionResult for it:

public class JsonStringResult : ContentResult
{
    public JsonStringResult(string json)
    {
        Content = json;
        ContentType = "application/json";
    }
}

And then return it's instance:

[HttpPost]
public JsonResult UpdateBatchSearchMembers()
{
    string returntext;
    if (!System.IO.File.Exists(path))
        returntext = Properties.Settings.Default.EmptyBatchSearchUpdate;
    else
        returntext = Properties.Settings.Default.ResponsePath;

    return new JsonStringResult(returntext);
}

Yeah that's it without no further issues, to avoid raw string json this is it.

    public ActionResult GetJson()
    {
        var json = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(
            Server.MapPath(@"~/App_Data/content.json"));

        return new ContentResult
        {
            Content = json,
            ContentType = "application/json",
            ContentEncoding = Encoding.UTF8
        };
    } 

NOTE: please note that method return type of JsonResult is not working for me, since JsonResult and ContentResult both inherit ActionResult but there is no relationship between them.