What is Action Methods & URLs in Asp.Net MVC?

All public methods that reside in the controller are Action Methods.

An Action method may be void, may return a view, JSON result, content result, or anything you wish to return.

We, often decare the return type of an Action Method as ActionResult, because an Action result is parent type means all other result types inherit from it, so an ActionResult can return a string, int, a complex type like Employee, a Json Result, or anything. so it is better to use ActionResult as return type so that you could return based on conditions.

public ActionResult GetEmployees()
{
List employeeList = new List() {
new Employee(){Id=1,Name="Michael",Gender="Male",Age=23},
new Employee(){Id=2,Name="John",Gender="Male",Age=26},
new Employee(){Id=3,Name="Lucy",Gender="female",Age=20},
};
return View(employeeList);
}
public ActionResult GetEmployeeList()
{
List employeeList = new List() {
new Employee(){Id=1,Name="Michael",Gender="Male",Age=23},
new Employee(){Id=2,Name="John",Gender="Male",Age=26},
new Employee(){Id=3,Name="Lucy",Gender="female",Age=20},
};
return Json(employeeList,JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

see, the same return type (ActionResult) is used to return a view on one method while JSON on another.

To learn MVC, follow my tutorials

https://www.sharpencode.com/article/MVC/why-the-microsoft-launched-asp-net-mvc

1 Reply

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Sachin Singh5y ago
All public methods that reside in the controller are Action Methods.
An Action method may be void, may return a view, JSON result, content result, or anything you wish to return.
We, often decare the return type of an Action Method as ActionResult, because an Action result is parent type means all other result types inherit from it, so an ActionResult can return a string, int, a complex type like Employee, a Json Result, or anything. so it is better to use ActionResult as return type so that you could return based on conditions.
public ActionResult GetEmployees()
        {
            List employeeList = new List() {
                new Employee(){Id=1,Name="Michael",Gender="Male",Age=23},
                  new Employee(){Id=2,Name="John",Gender="Male",Age=26},
                    new Employee(){Id=3,Name="Lucy",Gender="female",Age=20},
                };
            return View(employeeList);
        }
        public ActionResult GetEmployeeList()
        {
            List employeeList = new List() {
                new Employee(){Id=1,Name="Michael",Gender="Male",Age=23},
                  new Employee(){Id=2,Name="John",Gender="Male",Age=26},
                    new Employee(){Id=3,Name="Lucy",Gender="female",Age=20},
                };
            return Json(employeeList,JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
        }
see, the same return type (ActionResult) is used to return a view on one method while JSON on another.
To learn MVC, follow my tutorials
https://www.sharpencode.com/article/MVC/why-the-microsoft-launched-asp-net-mvc