Question

I have the following code:

private ActionResult Foo(string format, IEnumerable<String> myResults)
    {
        if (format == "JSON")
        {
            return ConvertToAnJsonActionResult(myResults); // GetJsonResults(sm);
        }
        else //turn to html and return
        {
            return View("Index", myResults);
        }
    }

myResults is a collection of JSON strings. I need to convert it to a ActionResult that holds that JSON array and send it to the client. How do I do that?

I tried return Json(myResults) which returns a JsonResult but then i am JSON encoding a collection of JSON objects which will result in a \ added to every ” when the client gets the results.

Answer 1

I ended up overriding JsonResult:

public class ArrayJsonResult : System.Web.Mvc.JsonResult
{
    public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
    {
        if (context == null)
        {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("context");
        }
        if (JsonRequestBehavior == JsonRequestBehavior.DenyGet &&
            String.Equals(context.HttpContext.Request.HttpMethod, "GET", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException("JsonRequest_GetNotAllowed");
        }

        HttpResponseBase response = context.HttpContext.Response;

        if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(ContentType))
        {
            response.ContentType = ContentType;
        }
        else
        {
            response.ContentType = "application/json";
        }
        if (ContentEncoding != null)
        {
            response.ContentEncoding = ContentEncoding;
        }
        if (Data != null)
        {
            StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
            sw.Write("[");
            try
            {
                var collection = Data as IEnumerable<String>;
                int countLessOne = collection.Count() -1;
                for (int i = 0; i < countLessOne; i++ )
                {
                    sw.Write(collection.ElementAt(i));
                    sw.Write(",");
                }
                sw.Write(collection.ElementAt(countLessOne));
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                //data was not a collection
            }

            sw.Write("]");
            response.Write(sw.ToString());
        }
    }