Returning HttpResponseMessage from MVC HttpPost, with content of JSON

Question

My first post on StackOverflow but I am a long time lurker! Hopefully I canget some help on an issue I'm working on.

I am trying to achieve the following. The code below is setting the content to be a JSON string which contains the following...

{
  "access_token": "value1",
  "expires_in": "value2",
  "client_in": null,
  "scope": "value3"
}

and here is the code which sends the HttpResponseMessage back to the client.

    [HttpPost]
    public HttpResponseMessage token(string grant_type,
                                     string code,
                                     string client_id,
                                     string client_secret,
                                     string redirect_uri)
    {
        WpOAuth2TokenRetValSuccessVM OA2_Success = new WpOAuth2TokenRetValSuccessVM();

        OA2_Success.access_token = "value1";
        OA2_Success.client_in = client_id;
        OA2_Success.expires_in = "value2";            //...The number of seconds left in the lifetime of the token
        OA2_Success.scope = "value3";                 //...Each access token can have only 1 scope

        HttpResponseMessage response = new HttpResponseMessage();
        response.StatusCode = HttpStatusCode.OK;
        string strJson = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(OA2_Success, Newtonsoft.Json.Formatting.Indented);

        StringContent n = new StringContent(strJson, Encoding.UTF8, "application/json");
        response.Content = n;

        return response;
    }

Now then, on the client side for the life of me I cannot get the JSON string back out of the content. Here is the code that I am using to read the content.

        HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient();
        httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Accept.Add(new MediaTypeWithQualityHeaderValue("application/json"));

        var postData = new List<KeyValuePair<string, string>>();
        postData.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, string>(str_KEY1, str_VALUE1));
        postData.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, string>(str_KEY2, str_VALUE2));
        postData.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, string>(str_KEY3, str_VALUE3));
        postData.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, string>(str_KEY4, str_VALUE4));
        postData.Add(new KeyValuePair<string, string>(str_KEY5, str_VALUE5));

        HttpContent content = new FormUrlEncodedContent(postData);

        httpClient.PostAsync(strURI, content).ContinueWith(requestTask =>
        {
            // Get HTTP response from completed task.
            HttpResponseMessage response = requestTask.Result;

            // Check that response was successful or throw exception
            response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();

            // Read response asynchronously as string and write out
            var responseValue = response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
            responseValue.Wait();

            string n = responseValue.Result;

            var i = 0;
        });

Now then, string n's content is as follows, but how do I get at the JSON??? Thanks all.

StatusCode: 200, ReasonPhrase: 'OK', Version: 1.1, Content: System.Net.Http.StringContent, Headers:
{
  Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
}

Answer 1

Sounds like you figured out the problem, but it should be noted that since you're using Web API, there's no need to serialize the data and build the HttpResponseMessage yourself; let the framework do it for you:

[HttpPost]
public WpOAuth2TokenRetValSuccessVM token(string grant_type,
                                          string code,
                                          string client_id,
                                          string client_secret,
                                          string redirect_uri)
{
    return new WpOAuth2TokenRetValSuccessVM
    {
        access_token = "value1",
        client_in = client_id,
        expires_in = "value2",
        scope = "value3"
    };
}