How do I return a custom HTTP response in an ASP.NET Core Controller?

Question

In ASP.NET core MVC, how do I return a custom HTTP response, along with a custom HTTP code? I wish to be able to build the response myself, and preferably return it from a controller.

  public IActionResult Index()
    {
          // set custom HTTP response and return
    }

.... someone fetches Index, and I should be able to manually send a response alike below, where I can control every aspect of the response. I can even work with simply returning a string I build myself.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:28:53 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Win32)
Last-Modified: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:15:56 GMT
Content-Length: 88
Content-Type: text/html
Connection: Closed

How do I do this in ASP.NET Core MVC?

What version of ASP.NET Core are you using? Are your deriving from ControllerBase or Controller? — Dai
– Dai, Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 0:19
You cannot manually set all headers in the response, such as Content-Length and Connection: closed, btw. And the host webserver will usually add its own Server: header (which you'll have no control over unless you specifically configure your outer web-server or reverse-proxy server). Besides, the whole point of using a framework like ASP.NET Core is to avoid having to mess-around with the low-level details of HTTP. — Dai
– Dai, Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 0:21
Does this answer your question? Best practice to return errors in ASP.NET Web API — Mick
– Mick, Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 0:29
This is a duplicate of stackoverflow.com/questions/37690114/… — Mick
– Mick, Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 0:34
@Mick It is not, that question simply asks how to return a status code. I was looking for a way of building my own responses manually and sending them to client. — Toxcique
– Toxcique, Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 0:42

Mick · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-28 00:39:12Z

1

Adapting the answer from here...

public IActionResult Index()
{
    return StatusCode((int)HttpStatusCode.MovedPermanently);
}

Another example if you wanted pass back a 400 status code and validation errors in the response body...

public IActionResult Index()
{
    var validationErrors = _repository.Validate()
    return StatusCode((int)HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, validationErrors);
}

edited Oct 28, 2020 at 0:39

answered Oct 28, 2020 at 0:32

Mick

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Comments

Toxcique · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-28 00:26:22Z

0

I realised I was a bit tunnelvisioned, the answer is much simpler than I at first expected.

        public void Index()
    {
        Response.StatusCode = 200;
        Response.StartAsync();

        return;
    }

This allows one to simply add data to a Response themselves and send them to the client. I am using ASP.NET Core 3.1 MVC.

answered Oct 28, 2020 at 0:26

Toxcique

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1 Comment

Dai Over a year ago

"ASP.NET Core MVC" doesn't really exist in ASP.NET Core 3. Anyway, if you're using this approach then you probably should derive from ControllerBase instead of Controller.

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