How to return JSON from MVC WEB API Controller

Question

I understand that WEB API uses content negotiation for Accept - Content-Type to return json or xml. This is not good enough and I need to be able pragmatically decide if I want to return json or xml.

The internet is flooded with obsolete examples of using HttpResponseMessage<T>, which is no longer present in MVC 4.

    tokenResponse response = new tokenResponse();
response.something = "gfhgfh";

    if(json)
    {
        return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, response, "application/json");
    }
    else
    {
         return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, response, "application/xml");
    }

How do I change the above code so that it works?

Answer 1

Try like this:

public HttpResponseMessage Get()
{
    tokenResponse response = new tokenResponse();
    response.something = "gfhgfh";

    if(json)
    {
        return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, response, Configuration.Formatters.JsonFormatter);
    }
    else
    {
         return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, response, Configuration.Formatters.XmlFormatter);
    }    
}

or even better, to avoid cluttering your controller with such plumbing infrastructure code you could also write a custom media formatter and perform this test inside it.