This is an ActionResult I wrote to return JSON from ASP.NET MVC to the browser using Json.NET.

The benefit of using JsonNetResult over the built in JsonResult is you get a better serializer (IMO Smile) and all the other benefits of Json.NET like nicely formatted JSON text.

public class JsonNetResult : ActionResult
{
  public Encoding ContentEncoding { get; set; }
  public string ContentType { get; set; }
  public object Data { get; set; }
 
  public JsonSerializerSettings SerializerSettings { get; set; }
  public Formatting Formatting { get; set; }
 
  public JsonNetResult()
  {
    SerializerSettings = new JsonSerializerSettings();
  }
 
  public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
  {
    if (context == null)
      throw new ArgumentNullException("context");
 
    HttpResponseBase response = context.HttpContext.Response;
 
    response.ContentType = !string.IsNullOrEmpty(ContentType)
      ? ContentType
      : "application/json";
 
    if (ContentEncoding != null)
      response.ContentEncoding = ContentEncoding;
 
    if (Data != null)
    {
      JsonTextWriter writer = new JsonTextWriter(response.Output) { Formatting = Formatting };
 
      JsonSerializer serializer = JsonSerializer.Create(SerializerSettings);
      serializer.Serialize(writer, Data);
 
      writer.Flush();
    }
  }
}

Using JsonNetResult within your application is pretty simple. The example below serializes the NumberFormatInfo settings for the .NET invariant culture.

public ActionResult GetNumberFormatting()
{
  JsonNetResult jsonNetResult = new JsonNetResult();
  jsonNetResult.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
  jsonNetResult.Data = CultureInfo.InvariantCulture.NumberFormat;
 
  return jsonNetResult;
}

And here is the nicely formatted result.

{
  "CurrencyDecimalDigits": 2,
  "CurrencyDecimalSeparator": ".",
  "IsReadOnly": true,
  "CurrencyGroupSizes": [
    3
  ],
  "NumberGroupSizes": [
    3
  ],
  "PercentGroupSizes": [
    3
  ],
  "CurrencyGroupSeparator": ",",
  "CurrencySymbol": "¤",
  "NaNSymbol": "NaN",
  "CurrencyNegativePattern": 0,
  "NumberNegativePattern": 1,
  "PercentPositivePattern": 0,
  "PercentNegativePattern": 0,
  "NegativeInfinitySymbol": "-Infinity",
  "NegativeSign": "-",
  "NumberDecimalDigits": 2,
  "NumberDecimalSeparator": ".",
  "NumberGroupSeparator": ",",
  "CurrencyPositivePattern": 0,
  "PositiveInfinitySymbol": "Infinity",
  "PositiveSign": "+",
  "PercentDecimalDigits": 2,
  "PercentDecimalSeparator": ".",
  "PercentGroupSeparator": ",",
  "PercentSymbol": "%",
  "PerMilleSymbol": "‰",
  "NativeDigits": [
    "0",
    "1",
    "2",
    "3",
    "4",
    "5",
    "6",
    "7",
    "8",
    "9"
  ],
  "DigitSubstitution": 1
}

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