Using JSON.NET to return ActionResult

Question

I'm trying to write a C# method that will serialize a model and return a JSON result. Here's my code:

    public ActionResult Read([DataSourceRequest] DataSourceRequest request)
    {
        var items = db.Words.Take(1).ToList();
        JsonSerializerSettings jsSettings = new JsonSerializerSettings();
        jsSettings.ReferenceLoopHandling = ReferenceLoopHandling.Ignore;
        var converted = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(items, null, jsSettings);
        return Json(converted, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
    }

I got the following JSON result when I go to Words/Read in Chrome:

"[{\"WordId\":1,\"Rank\":1,\"PartOfSpeech\":\"article\",\"Image\":\"Upload/29/1/Capture1.PNG\",\"FrequencyNumber\":\"22038615\",\"Article\":null,\"ClarificationText\":null,\"WordName\":\"the | article\",\"MasterId\":0,\"SoundFileUrl\":\"/UploadSound/7fd752a6-97ef-4a99-b324-a160295b8ac4/1/sixty_vocab_click_button.mp3\",\"LangId\":1,\"CatId\":null,\"IsActive\":false}

I think the \" escaped quotes are a problem that occurs when you double serialize an object. From other questions: WCF JSON output is getting unwanted quotes & backslashes added

It definitely looks like I'm double serializing my object, since I first serialize using JSON.NET and then pass my result into the Json() function. I need to manually serialize to avoid referenceloops, but I think my View needs an ActionResult.

How can I return an ActionResult here? Do I need to, or can I just return a string?

Answer 1

I found a similar stackoverflow question: Json.Net And ActionResult

The answer there suggested using

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

That seems to work on my very simple page.