ASP.NET Web API Conditionally return HttpResponseMessage

Question

I have a ASP.NET Web API, and I have been responding to request with this format,

    [HttpPost]
    [Route("")]
    public HttpResponseMessage AlexaSkill()
    {
        HttpResponseMessage response = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, "value");
        response.Content = new StringContent("put json here", Encoding.UTF8);
        response.Content.Headers.ContentType = new System.Net.Http.Headers.MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json"); 

        return response;
    } 

and that has been working great. The issue is that there are certain situation where the requester does not expect a response. I cannot figure out how to not give a response to the requester who is posting to the url. How can I be able to return a response like a have above and also have the option to have the function not give a respons essentially acting as a void function?

Answer 1

You should always return a response. There's a status code 204 for when you don't want to send content in your response. From the spec:

10.2.5 204 No Content

The server has fulfilled the request but does not need to return an entity-body, and might want to return updated metainformation. The response MAY include new or updated metainformation in the form of entity-headers, which if present SHOULD be associated with the requested variant.

If the client is a user agent, it SHOULD NOT change its document view from that which caused the request to be sent. This response is primarily intended to allow input for actions to take place without causing a change to the user agent's active document view, although any new or updated metainformation SHOULD be applied to the document currently in the user agent's active view.

The 204 response MUST NOT include a message-body, and thus is always terminated by the first empty line after the header fields.

So your code could be something like this:

[HttpPost]
public HttpResponseMessage SomeMethod()
{
    // Do things
    return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.NoContent);
}