asp mvc best way to return a json string from a controller

Question

I have a simple Action that iterates around a dbset does a bit of manipulation on each record then returns the chosen records via json, a bit like this:

List<JsonResult> dataout = new List<JsonResult>();
foreach(var r in db.People.OrderBy("something")) {
 // do stuff to the rec
 string SubmittersName = rec.Submitter.Name;
 dataout.Add(this.Json(new { rec.Created, rec.Name, SubmittersName, 
 OtherStuff }));
}
return new JsonResult() {
 Data = dataout.Select(r=>r),
 ContentEncoding = Encoding.UTF8,
 JsonRequestBehavior = JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet
};

To me it seems a bit clumsy, but its easy to follow whats going on.

(Also in the returned json I get ContentEncoding:null which seems a bit strange given that I specified it)

How could this be improved on?

General sugesstions/comments appreciated.

TIA.

Answer 1

You're misusing JsonResult.

JsonResult isn't a way to store JSON data; it's simply a way to return JSON data from a view.
You shouldn't create a list of them.

By returning JSON from a collection of JsonResults, you're actually converting the JsonResults to JSON, including their ContentEncoding properties (which you never set).

Instead, you can directly return a collection of anonymous types:

return Json(
 db.People.OrderBy(something).Select(rec => new { rec.Created, ... }),
 JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet
);

• SLaks: You can put that in the Select call, or add them to a List<object>. (Since you cannot easily declare a list of anonymous types)
• push 22: exactly the problem not easliy anyway. ArrayList works which is the way i think i'll go to get rid of the problem. I have tried to put the tranform function into the select but it proved difficult, I kept getting lots of compiler errors about not be able to parse the anon function into an expression tree.
• SLaks: Oh; you're using LINQ to SQL. You can fix those errors by calling AsEnumerable() before Select().