Return JsonResult from web api without its properties

Question

I have a Web API controller and from there I m returning an object as JSON from an action   I m doing that like this   public ActionResult GetAllNotificationSettings         var result   new List lt ListItems gt            Filling the list with data here            Then I return the list     return new JsonResult   Data   result        But this way the JsonResult object including its Data attribute is serialized as JSON  So my final JSON that is return by the action looks like this          ContentEncoding   null       ContentType   null       Data              ListItems                                    ListId   2                   Name    John Doe                                                ListId   3                   Name    Jane Doe                                       JsonRequestBehavior   1       MaxJsonLength   null       RecursionLimit   null     I can t serialize this JSON string because the JsonResult object added all kinds of other properties to it  I m only interested in ListItems  nothing else  But it automatically added things like  ContentType  MaxJsonLength etc     Now this won t work for me because of all the other properties in the JSON string      var myList   JsonConvert DeserializeObject lt List lt ListItems gt  gt  jsonString     Is there a way to send a JSON object from the action so that it won t add all the properties that I dont need

User · Answer

When using WebAPI  you should just return the Object rather than specifically returning Json  as the API will either return JSON or XML depending on the request   I am not sure why your WebAPI is returning an ActionResult  but I would change the code to something like   public IEnumerable lt ListItems gt  GetAllNotificationSettings         var result   new List lt ListItems gt            Filling the list with data here            Then I return the list     return result      This will result in JSON if you are calling it from some AJAX code   P S WebAPI is supposed to be RESTful  so your Controller should be called ListItemController and your Method should just be called Get  But that is for another day

User · Answer

As someone who has worked with ASP NET API for about 3 years  I d recommend returning an HttpResponseMessage instead  Don t use the ActionResult or IEnumerable   ActionResult is bad because as you ve discovered   Return IEnumerable lt   is bad because you may want to extend it later and add some headers  etc   Using JsonResult is bad because you should allow your service to be extendable and support other response formats as well just in case in the future  if you seriously want to limit it you can do so using Action Attributes  not in the action body   public HttpResponseMessage GetAllNotificationSettings         var result   new List lt ListItems gt            Filling the list with data here            Then I return the list     return Request CreateResponse HttpStatusCode OK  result       In my tests  I usually use the below helper method to extract my objects from the HttpResponseMessage    public class ResponseResultExtractor               public T Extract lt T gt  HttpResponseMessage response                        return response Content ReadAsAsync lt T gt    Result                   var actual   ResponseResultExtractor Extract lt List lt ListItems gt  gt  response     In this way  you ve achieved the below    Your Action can also return Error Messages and status codes like 404 not found so in the above way you can easily handle it  Your Action isn t limited to JSON only but supports JSON depending on the client s request preference and the settings in the Formatter    Look at this  http   www asp net web-api overview formats-and-model-binding content-negotiation

User · Answer

return JsonConvert SerializeObject images ToList    Formatting None  new JsonSerializerSettings   PreserveReferencesHandling   PreserveReferencesHandling None  ReferenceLoopHandling   ReferenceLoopHandling Ignore       using Newtonsoft Json

User · Answer

I had a similar problem  differences being I wanted to return an object that was already converted to a json string and my controller get returns a IHttpActionResult   Here is how I solved it  First I declared a utility class  public class RawJsonActionResult   IHttpActionResult       private readonly string  jsonString       public RawJsonActionResult string jsonString                 jsonString   jsonString             public Task lt HttpResponseMessage gt  ExecuteAsync CancellationToken cancellationToken                var content   new StringContent  jsonString           content Headers ContentType   new MediaTypeHeaderValue  application json            var response   new HttpResponseMessage HttpStatusCode OK    Content   content            return Task FromResult response             This class can then be used in your controller  Here is a simple example  public IHttpActionResult Get         var jsonString       id   1   name     a small object           return new RawJsonActionResult jsonString

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