Returning Json in ASP.NET MVC Web Api

Question

I am trying to learn how to create an API with ASP.NET MVC (I'm using vNext). To do this, I'm just trying to return the current date. At this time, I have the following:

using System;
using Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc;

[Route("api/test")]
public class TestController : Controller
{
  [HttpGet("date")]
  public string Date()
  {
    return Json(new { result = 1, currentDate = DateTime.UtcNow });   
  }
}

I execute this from fiddler via the composer tab. When I do that, http://localhost:5001/api/test. I press Execute. The result is a status code of 200. However, there is no JSON. Instead, I get the "Welcome Your ASP.NET vNext application has successfully started" page.

What am I doing wrong?

Looks like you are using MVC controller for implementing your API. ASP.NET Web API is a better choice for that, have you considered it? — Sergey Kolodiy
– Sergey Kolodiy, Commented Dec 13, 2014 at 20:24

Nexus23 · Accepted Answer · 2014-12-13 20:16:58Z

3

Your ActionResult seems to be invalid:

Try with "JsonResult" and Allowed Json behavior.

public class TestController : Controller
{
    [Route("api/test")]
    public JsonResult Date()
    {
        return Json(new { result = 1, currentDate = DateTime.UtcNow }, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
    }
}

You Also need to enable Attribute routing in RouteConfig class:

public static void RegisterRoutes(RouteCollection routes)
{
    routes.IgnoreRoute("{resource}.axd/{*pathInfo}");

    routes.MapMvcAttributeRoutes();

    routes.MapRoute(
        name: "Default",
        url: "{controller}/{action}/{id}",
        defaults: new { controller = "Home", action = "Index", id = UrlParameter.Optional }
    );
}

edited Dec 13, 2014 at 20:16

answered Dec 13, 2014 at 20:04

Nexus23

6,41310 gold badges53 silver badges68 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

user687554 Over a year ago

So, I might be wrong. But, I thought you did not have to specifically set a type of result. I thought the caller could request either Json or Xml, or something else. I thought ASP.NET took care of the serialization. Am I off on this? I do not understand why I need to set the return type to JsonResult. Thank you for your answer!

danludwig Over a year ago

@user687554 ASP.NET WebAPI will return JSON or XML depending on the caller's content-type header. Were you using an Api Controller, your action method would just return the raw type or an HttpResponseMessage. Web API's guts would then kick in and return either a JSON or XML representation of the data depending upon the request header. However your code is not using ASP.NET WebApi, it is using ASP.NET MVC, which does not have this kind of automatic response formatting in its guts like WebAPI does. This answer is correct.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Returning Json in ASP.NET MVC Web Api

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

2 Comments

Related