Returning Empty ActionResult

Question

I may encounter situations, when I need to just return bad request result.

For example, there is a call to MVC 3 site's controllers action, but the required parameter is missing in a request uri.

What do I return in response. I know I can do this:

Response.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.BadRequest;
return Content(string.Empty);

Is this the correct way for the above described situation?

For future reference, there is an `EmptyResult` type. – scottm Feb 08 '12 at 16:02 — scottm, Feb 08 '12 at 16:02
`return new EmptyResult();` regarding @scottm's comment. – Uwe Keim Nov 03 '17 at 06:45 — Uwe Keim, Nov 03 '17 at 06:45

score 38 · Accepted Answer · edited Mar 20 '14 at 16:29

38

Your solution will work OK, but more clear way will be using HttpStatusCodeResult class, like this:

return new HttpStatusCodeResult(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest);

edited Mar 20 '14 at 16:29

Bryan Legend

answered Feb 08 '12 at 15:58

4

No need to cast the status code to an int. Just do return new HttpStatusCodeResult(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest); – iheartcsharp Aug 15 '13 at 15:37
14

This solution is not equivalent for author's code. By default HttpStatusCodeResult causes IIS to return default HTML error page with error description, but not empty content. – dlxeon Mar 18 '14 at 06:50
1

@dlxeon :to get an empty result, we can use NoContent Status instead of BadRequest. Then it should look like this. HttpStatusCodeResult(HttpStatusCode.NoContent); – PNP Jul 09 '21 at 09:26

1 Answers1