How to produce a file to download containing a JSON structure?

Question

I have this method in my controller.

public IActionResult Download()
{
  return Json(_context.Users);
}

I noticed that it produces the correct JSON structure but it's being rendered in the browser as common text. I want it to be downloaded to the client's computer. How do I do that?

I'm not sure if is should make my object to stream somehow like this or maybe create a file on my hard drive and serve it like this.

I can't find anything that strikes me as straight-forward and simple like we're used to in C#. So I fear that I'm missing a concept here.

Answer 1

Convert the data into bytes then those bytes into a FileResult. You return the FileResult and the browser will do whatever it does normally when presented with a 'file', usually either prompt the user or download.

Example below:

public ActionResult TESTSAVE()
    {
        var data = "YourDataHere";
        byte[] bytes = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(data);
        var output = new FileContentResult(bytes, "application/octet-stream");
        output.FileDownloadName = "download.txt";

        return output;
    }

In your case you would simply take your JSON data as a string.