IE tries to download json response while submitting jQuery multipart form data containing file

Question

I'm trying to submit a form with a file field in it via jQuery.Form plugin, here's the code:

$('form').ajaxSubmit({
  url: "/path",
  dataType: "json",
  contentType: "multipart/form-data"
...

The server then returns json as a response. Works great in all browsers except IE, which tries to download the response as a file. If I remove the file field from the form, it also works just fine.

I've seen various solutions here and in Google and basically tried almost everything described, including setting enctype for the form via jQuery, but it didn't work.

Any suggestions would be very welcomed.

Answer 1

You can simply return JSON from the controller as "text/html" and then parse it on the client side using JQuery.parseJSON().

Controller:

    return this.Json(
            new
                {
                    prop1 = 5,
                    prop2 = 10
                }, 
            "text/html");

Client side:

jsonResponse = $.parseJSON(response);

if(jsonResponse.prop1==5) {
     ...
}

This solution has been working for me.