How to return Xml Data from a Web API Method?

Question

I have a Web Api method which should return an xml data but it returns string:

 public class HealthCheckController : ApiController     {                [HttpGet]         public string Index()         {             var healthCheckReport = new HealthCheckReport();              return healthCheckReport.ToXml();         }     } 

It returns:

<string xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/2003/10/Serialization/"> <myroot><mynode></mynode></myroot> </string> 

and I have added this mapping:

 config.Routes.MapHttpRoute(               name: "HealthCheck",               routeTemplate: "healthcheck",               defaults: new               {                   controller = "HealthCheck",                   action = "Index"               }); 

How to make it return just the xml bits:

<myroot><mynode></mynode></myroot> 

If I was using just MVC, I could be using the below but Web API doesn't support "Content":

 [HttpGet]         public ActionResult Index()         {             var healthCheckReport = new HealthCheckReport();              return Content(healthCheckReport.ToXml(), "text/xml");         } 

I have also added the below codes to the WebApiConfig class:

 config.Formatters.Remove(config.Formatters.JsonFormatter);  config.Formatters.XmlFormatter.UseXmlSerializer = true; 

Answer 1

The quickest way is this,

 public class HealthCheckController : ApiController  {             [HttpGet]      public HttpResponseMessage Index()      {          var healthCheckReport = new HealthCheckReport();           return new HttpResponseMessage() {Content = new StringContent( healthCheckReport.ToXml(), Encoding.UTF8, "application/xml" )};      }  } 

but it is also very easy to build a new XmlContent class that derives from HttpContent to support XmlDocument or XDocument directly. e.g.

public class XmlContent : HttpContent {     private readonly MemoryStream _Stream = new MemoryStream();      public XmlContent(XmlDocument document) {         document.Save(_Stream);             _Stream.Position = 0;         Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/xml");     }      protected override Task SerializeToStreamAsync(Stream stream, System.Net.TransportContext context) {          _Stream.CopyTo(stream);          var tcs = new TaskCompletionSource<object>();         tcs.SetResult(null);         return tcs.Task;     }      protected override bool TryComputeLength(out long length) {         length = _Stream.Length;         return true;     } } 

and you can use it just like you would use StreamContent or StringContent, except that it accepts a XmlDocument,

public class HealthCheckController : ApiController {            [HttpGet]     public HttpResponseMessage Index()     {        var healthCheckReport = new HealthCheckReport();         return new HttpResponseMessage() {            RequestMessage = Request,            Content = new XmlContent(healthCheckReport.ToXmlDocument()) };     } }