In my MVC application, I am facing an issue while trying to access a REST Service. I am using the getJSON method to retrieve data from a controller, which internally calls the REST service and returns data in JSON format. However, when executing the DownloadString method, a large number of "\ characters are appearing in the output, resulting in improper JSON data being returned by the Json function. Consequently, my client-side script is unable to access the JSON properties.
The script used in my view is as follows:
$.getJSON("@Url.Action("GetManufacturers", "Home")",function(data){
console.debug("Status is : "+data.Status)
});
The action method responsible for retrieving the data looks like this:
public ActionResult GetManufacturers()
{
string restURL ="http://mytestserver/myapi/Manufacturers";
using (var client = new WebClient())
{
var data = client.DownloadString(restURL);
// The data variable contains "\" everywhere
return Json(data,JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}
}
I have debugged the action method using visual studio breakpoints and noticed numerous occurrences of \".
Upon inspecting the callback passed to the getJSON function, I found that the JSON tab is empty while the response tab shows the content with these issues.
I suspect that if these "\", were not present, parsing the JSON would be much smoother.
I have verified the correctness of the received data from the REST service using Fiddler, and it seems to be in the correct JSON format.
Is there anyone who can assist me in resolving this issue? I would like to return proper JSON from my action method. Additionally, there may be situations where I need to read the JSON properties within the C# code itself. I did come across an example using DataContractJsonSerializer, but that requires a concrete type for conversion, which is not ideal as other clients will also access my REST Service and expecting them to create fake entities for this purpose would not be practical.