Pass list of strings from controller to view

Question

Hi,

I want to send a list of items when a new item in dropdown is selected. This is the controller class:

public List<string> GetVersionNumber()
{ return allowedList;
}

This is the view:

        $('#testTypeName').change(function() {
            $.ajax({
                type: "POST",
                url: "/TestCases/GetVersionNumber",
                data: { "testTypeName": $('#testTypeName').val() },
                dataType: "json",
                success: function(data) {
                    $("#testTypeName").selectedItem = data;
                }
            });
        });

My first question is should I use ActionResult in controller ? If yes, how can I use?
OR I can use a method which will result list of strings? If yes, how can I use ?
Kindly waiting for your response.

Thanks,
Santosh

Answer 1

Depends upon the type of controller you have really. If you are building a web API controller (deriving from ApiController) then the return type is fine. You only need to use ActionResult if you need to return a mix of return types (such as data, not found, etc). Because APIs normally return JSON (and assuming you haven't mucked with formatters at all) then the runtime will convert your return type to the appropriate format.

For MVC you should be returning ActionResult. MVC normally assumes an HTML return value. For an API-like controller action in MVC you should wrap the return value in a call to JsonResult to tell the runtime to return JSON. In that case the return type needs to be ActionResult because that is what JsonResult is derived from. Technically you could use JsonResult directly but ActionResult is generally the better route.

Answer 2

Hi @Santosh Umarani ,
For MVC, you could use ActionResult and GetVersionNumber method together. The ActionResult method return view and the GetVersionNumber method return json data. By the way,you need return json data.
Best regards,
Yijing Sun

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