Question

I have this controller function that returns cpu stats:

        public ActionResult GetStats()
        {
            Random rand = new Random();
            ViewData["cpu_temp"] = rand.Next(0, 100) + "%";

            return View();
        }

And with a view it works 100%. Bu tI’m wondering if I could shorten the process, and just do something like:

        public ActionResult GetStats()
        {
            Random rand = new Random();

            something.writeline(rand.Next(0, 100) + "%");
        }

Just so I can create controllers and not care about views for simple simple simple output 😀

FIX, after a tip by Jamie Dixon i came up with this solution:

        public ActionResult GetStats()
        {
            Random rand = new Random();
            ViewData["cpu_temp"] = rand.Next(0, 100) + "%";

            return Json(ViewData, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
        }

Works as intended 😀

Answer 1

It all depends on where you want to view the data.

If you want to view the data in your web browser through a web page then you’ll need to return a view.

If you just want to see the data you could output it to the debug console with

Debug.WriteLine(mystring);

Alternatively you could send it to the browser in any number of formats that can be downloaded by the user (JSON, XML, Text file) that won’t require a view.

The key point here is that if you want the user to view the information in their browser in a way that’s likely to show up for them, you’re going to want to use a View.

UPDATE

To return a JSON object you can simply return JSON(object).

return JSON(new {foo = "foo", bar = "bar"});