Can I use ASP.NET MVC3 exclusively as a RESTful web service?

Question

I am creating READ ONLY sencha-touch for our local church.

We use Vimeo to host all of our videos, and I would like to integrate our Vimeo vids as well as our RSS feed into our web application.

The rest of the “content” in the application will be static “information” as well as a contact form.

My question is: is it worth kosher to use ASP.NET MVC3 (minus "V") to control JSON in our web application?

Answer 1

Yes, that works great. Just return JsonResult.

Here is an example that I use in production:

 public partial class StudentController : BaseController {
    public StudentController(RESTContext portalContext)
        : base(portalContext) { }

    [HttpGet, Url("organizations/{organizationId?}/students")]
    public virtual JsonResult List(Guid? organizationId) {
        if (organizationId != RESTContext.OrganizationId)
            throw new HttpNotAuthorizedException();

        var query = RESTContext.GetQuery<IQuery<StudentCasesReport>>()
            .Where(x => x.OrganizationId, organizationId)
            .OrderBy(x => x.LastName, SortOrder.Ascending);
        var cases = query.Execute(IsolationLevel.ReadUncommitted);

        return Json(cases, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
    }

    [HttpGet, Url("organizations/{organizationId?}/students/{studentId?}")]
    public virtual JsonResult Get(Guid? organizationId, Guid? studentId) {
        if (studentId.IsNull())
            throw new HttpNotFoundExecption();

        if (organizationId != RESTContext.OrganizationId)
            throw new HttpNotModifiedException();

        var query = RESTContext.GetQuery<IQuery<StudentCasesReport>>()
            .Where(x => x.OrganizationId, organizationId)
            .Where(x => x.StudentCaseId, studentId)
            .OrderBy(x => x.LastName, SortOrder.Ascending);
        var cases = query.Execute(IsolationLevel.ReadUncommitted).FirstOrDefault();

        if (cases.IsNull())
            throw new HttpNotFoundExecption();

        return Json(cases, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
    }
}