How do you return error messages from AJAX calls using jQuery and ASP.NET MVC?

Question

If I have an ASP.NET MVC controller action that is called from a jQuery .ajax call that needs to throw an error, how do I do so? I know I can create a JSON object and pass it an "error" property, but what if the response from the .ajax call isn't expected to be JSON but HTML instead?

Answer 1

Use the HandleError attribute, and set View to a view which returns the appropriate HTML fragment.

[HandleError(View="AjaxErrorFragment")]
public ActionResult ICallThisWithjQuery() {