Can I manually hardcode the JSON object that the ASP.NET Web API will return?
I use this in Django (similar to Ruby on Rails) where in some cases I need to hard-code a JSON response object in order for the client to interpret, but I have searched all over the internet for figuring out how to do this with ASP.NET Web API and I can't find anything on this, the ASP.NET Web API seems to force me to create a class to represent the JSON response for each URI controller.
For example, here's the only way I know to manually create a JSON response:
1.) First I need to create a class to represent the response object
public class XYZ_JSON
{
public string PropertyName { get; set; }
public string PropertyValue { get; set; }
}
2.) Then I need to write the URI controller correctly that will return "XYZ_JSON" which I just defined above:
// GET: api/ReturnJSON
public XYZ_JSON Get()
{
XYZ_JSON test = new XYZ_JSON { PropertyName = "Romulus", PropertyValue = "123123" };
return test;
}
A response will be received with an HTTP message:
200 OK
{"PropertyName":"Romulus", "PropertyValue":"123123"}
This whole class for the JSON design pattern is cool and that's it, but it doesn't help and actually makes things much worse when trying to return a class as a JSON object with many classes inside it, for example:
public class XYZ_JSON
{
public string PropertyName { get; set; }
public string PropertyValue { get; set; }
public List<ComplexObject> objects { get; set; } // <- do not want
}
The JSON response object above is not that complicated, but for what I am trying to accomplish, I will need to put the list of classes in the list of classes in the list of classes, and I cannot work out this awkwardly unless I spend a week on it, which is ridiculous.
I need to return a JSON response this way:
// GET: api/ReturnJSON
public JSON_Response Get(string id)
{
// do some SQL querying here to grab the model or what have you.
if (somethingGoesWrong = true)
return {"result":"fail"}
else
return {"result":"success","value":"some value goes here"}
}
The design pattern above is what I am trying to accomplish with ASP.NET Web API, a very simple way to return a semi-hard encoded JSON response object that will allow me to return very unique and dynamic responses from a single URI. There will be many use cases when a list of 8 unique class objects is returned.
Also, if what I am trying to accomplish is the reverse way of doing things, then that's fine. I have released a very successful and stable iOS app with a flawless Django back-end server that does a great job with this without issue.
Can someone explain to me how I can return a simple hardcoded JSON response using ASP.NET Web API?
Thank!
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You can create anonymous types in C # so that you can use one of them to get a hardcoded result. For example:
return new JsonResult
{
Data = new
{
result = "success",
value = "some value"
}
};
To clarify, the above code is for ASP.NET MVC. If you are using the Web API, you can simply return a data object or use IHttpActionResult
. The anonymous type ( new {}
) part remains the same.
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For a hardcoded answer, why not just do something like below. JSON content will be returned without quotation marks.
public HttpResponseMessage Get()
{
string content = "Your JSON content";
return BuildResponseWithoutQuotationMarks(content);
}
private HttpResponseMessage BuildResponseWithoutQuotationMarks(string content)
{
var response = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK);
response.Content = new StringContent(content);
return response;
}
private HttpResponseMessage BuildResponseWithQuotationMarks(string content)
{
var response = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, content);
return response;
}
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