send custom error status code with JArray - json

Question

I have webapi, that return JArray.
There is any way to send response with some status code that I pick (like 422, 4XX )?
//GET api/UserControl/GetUserName
public JArray GetUserName()
{
JArray json = new JArray();
try
{
string UserID= getUserID();
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(UserID) || UserID== "None Was found")
{
var result = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(donorRep.GetUserFullName(UserID), Formatting.None,
new JsonSerializerSettings()
{
ReferenceLoopHandling = ReferenceLoopHandling.Ignore
});
try
{
json = JArray.Parse(result);
}
catch
{
json.Add(result.ToString());
}
}
else
{
json.Add("There was an issue while retrieving your UserID.");
}
}
catch (JsonSerializationException ex)
{
json.Add("There was an issue while retrieving your IDSID. Please contact support");
}
return json;
}
for example if there is an error here than in the UI :
json.Add("There was an issue while retrieving your UserID");

Answer 1

Wrap your array inside a JSON object, then add additional properties for the status code and any other "meta" information you might need. For example, you might try to make the JSON response look something like this:
{
"statusCode" : 422
"errorMessage" : "Error message, if any, goes here."
"results" : [
"item 1",
"item 2",
"etc.",
"you can also use objects here instead of strings if your data is more complex"
]
}
Then make your code something like this:
// GET api/UserControl/GetUserName
public JObject GetUserName()
{
JArray resultArray = new JArray();
int statusCode = 200; // success
string errorMessage = null;
try
{
string UserID= getUserID();
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(UserID))
{
var fullName = donorRep.GetUserFullName(UserID);
resultArray.Add(fullName);
}
else
{
statusCode = 421; // error
errorMessage = "There was an issue while retrieving your UserID.";
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
statusCode = 422; // error
errorMessage = "There was an issue while retrieving your IDSID. Please contact support.";
}
JObject response = new JObject();
response.Add("statusCode", statusCode);
response.Add("errorMessage", errorMessage);
response.Add("results", resultArray);
return response;
}
You'll have to adjust your client side code to be able to extract the parts of the response. If you're using jQuery, for example, you could get the data something like this:
$.get("/api/UserControl/GetUserName")
.done(function(data) {
var statusCode = data.statusCode;
if (statusCode == 200) {
var userName = data.results[0];
alert("Success! User name is " + userName);
}
else {
alert("Failed with code " + statusCode + ". message: " + data.errorMessage);
}
});
For sake of completeness I should also mention that in Web API you don't have to manually build the JSON using JObjects, JArrays, etc. As an alternative, you can use strongly-typed classes and return those from your methods directly, and Web API will serialize them to JSON for you. Of course the structure of the classes has to match the JSON you want to return. For example if you wanted to do that approach, you would define a class like this:
class ResponseData
{
public int statusCode { get; set; }
public string errorCode { get; set; }
public List<string> results { get; set; }
public ResponseData()
{
results = new List<string>();
}
}
Then you can do:
public ResponseData GetUserName()
{
ResponseData response = new ResponseData { statusCode = 200 };
try
{
string userID = getUserID();
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(UserID))
{
var fullName = donorRep.GetUserFullName(UserID);
response.results.Add(fullName);
}
else
{
response.statusCode = 421; // error
response.errorMessage = "There was an issue while retrieving your UserID.";
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
response.statusCode = 422; // error
response.errorMessage = "There was an issue while retrieving your IDSID. Please contact support.";
}
return response;
}