In MVC, how do I return a string result?

Question

Hi,

In my ajax call, I want to return a string value back to the calling page.

Do I still using ActionResult or just return a string?

Answer 1

You can just use the ContentResult to return a plain string:

    public ActionResult Temp() {
        return Content("Hi there!");
    }

ContentResult by default returns a text/plain as its contentType. This is overloadable so you can also do:

return Content("<xml>This is poorly formatted xml.</xml>", "text/xml");

Answer 2

You can also just return string if you know that's the only thing the method will ever return. For example:

public string MyActionName() {
  return "Hi there!";
}