Question

I’m trying to return simple Json data back from a standard WebForm. It sounds very dumb, but I actually need this to happen. I’m using MVC, and this is one of only 3 pages that I use that is NOT an MVC view. Otherwise, I’d write a controller to return Json(myData), but I can’t do that.

Here is what I’m doing:

        var serializer = new JavaScriptSerializer();
        var json = serializer.Serialize(someObject);
        HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/json";
        HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(json);
        HttpContext.Current.Response.End();

However, I keep getting a browser dialog asking me to do with the webpage, meaning it’s trying to download the page… ?

What am I missing?

My Solution…

I was able to solve the problem by changing my ContentType to “text/html” (yes even though it’s Json data). 🙁 While it’s not the correct approach, it works for me, as there is only Mvc view in my entire solution that will ever call it.

Answer 1

The most important question is what do you want to do with the data. If you just pass it like a result of a page request, it is quite normal that the browser doesn’t know what to do with it. If you want to process it in some way, you have to hook it up somewhere (an asynchronous request that updates something at the page ?).

Anyway, if you just want to use a page to return data it’s probably better to use HttpHandler (file with extension ashx) instead, it’s a more lightweight alternative when you don’t need all the rendering lifecycle that the usual WebForm has to do.