Creating MVC Views that are not HTML

Question

This is a general question about MVC as a pattern, but in this case I am using ASP.NET MVC.

I need to create an application whose output is an HTTP-accessed XML stream (content type text/xml).

I can do this using traditional ASP.NET using a Generic Handler object.

public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
{
    context.Response.ContentType = "text/xml";
    context.Response.Write(someXmlText);
}

Can I create an ASP.NET MVC View that achieves the same result?

Is this an appropriate use of an MVC View?

Answer 1

You can use MvcContrib's XmlResult. This works just like your example above. You don't need to use a view to render the XML.

In essence - you have an action on a controller that returns the XML.

Answer 2

you can return it directly without views, you just need to specify content type in response:

for example you can specify action method like this:

XElement GetElements(param1,param2...)
{
    XElement elements = new XElement("elements",
                                from c in element
                                select new XElement("element",
                                                     new XElement("Id",c.Id),
                                                     new XElement("Name",c.Name)
                                                    ));


    this.ControllerContext.HttpContext.Response.ContentType = "application/xml";
    return elements;
}