Format JSON wrong web api

Question

I’m having trouble returning json to my mvc 5 api.

In the Get method it returns a string in this format:

public string Get()
        {
           return "{\"data\":[{\"Codigo\":\"AAAA\",\"Finalidade\":\"AAAA\"},{\"Codigo\":\"AAAA\",\"Finalidade\":\"AAAA\"}]}"
}

When I ask on my page localhost:9640/api/apiimovel?formato=json look at the format:

"{\"data\":[{\"Codigo\":\"AAAA\",\"Finalidade\":\"AAAA\"},{\"Codigo\":\"AAAA\",\"Finalidade\":\"AAAA\"}]}"

But when I do this query by the normal controller json returns correct !!

What happens to this problem ?

Answer 1

The purpose of the webapi is that you return the strongly typed result and the API takes care of giving the parse to the JSON (or XML) format. The way you are doing is by returning a JSON from a string and not the json from your object.

Create a class with the Code and Purpose properties, fill in the instantiated array with your data, and return from the function:

API:

public Lista Get() {
    var result = new Lista {
        data = new[] {
            new Item {Codigo = "AAA", Finalidade = "AAAAAAA"},
            new Item {Codigo = "AAA", Finalidade = "AAAAAAA"}
        }
    };

    return result;
}

Classes:

public class Lista {
    public Item[] data { get; set; }
}

public class Item {
    public string Codigo { get; set; }
    public string Finalidade { get; set; }
}