C# – How to Output JSON String as JsonResult in MVC4

asp.net-mvcc++deserializationjsonserialization

This seems so simple I must be over-thinking it.

TL;DR;

How can I modify the code below to return the json object contained in the string rather than a string that happens to contain json?

public ActionResult Test()
{
  var json_string = "{ success: \"true\" }";
  return Json(json_string, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

This code returns a string literal containing the json: 

"{ success: "true" }"

However, I'd like it to return the json contained in the string:

{ success: "true" }

Slightly longer version

I'm trying to quickly prototype some external api calls and just want to pass those results through my "api" as a fake response for now. The json object is non-trivial – something on the order of 10,000 "lines" or 90KB. I don't want to make a strongly typed object(s) for all the contents of this one json response just so I can run it through a deserializer – so that is out.

So the basic logic in my controller is:

  1. Call externall api
  2. Store string result of web request into a var (see json_string above)
  3. Output those results as json (not a string) using the JsonResult producing method Json()

Any help is greatly appreciated… mind is melting.

Best Answer

The whole point of the Json() helper method is to serialize as JSON.

If you want to return raw content, do that directly:

return Content(jsonString, "application/json");
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