Return JSON file with ASP.NET Web API

I found another solution which works also if anyone was interested.

public HttpResponseMessage Get()
{
    var stream = new FileStream(@"c:\data.json", FileMode.Open);

    var result = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK);
    result.Content = new StreamContent(stream);
    result.Content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("application/json");

    return result;
}

Does the file already has valid JSON in it? If so, instead of calling File.ReadAllLines you should call File.ReadAllText and get it as a single string. Then you need to parse it as JSON so that Web API can re-serialize it.

public object Get()
{
    string allText = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(@"c:\data.json");

    object jsonObject = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(allText);
    return jsonObject;
}

This will:

1. Read the file as a string
2. Parse it as a JSON object into a CLR object
3. Return it to Web API so that it can be formatted as JSON (or XML, or whatever)