Difference Between ViewResult() and ActionResult()

Question

What is the difference between ViewResult() and ActionResult() in ASP.NET MVC?

public ViewResult Index()
{
    return View();
}

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Answer 1

ViewResult is a subclass of ActionResult. The View method returns a ViewResult. So really these two code snippets do the exact same thing. The only difference is that with the ActionResult one, your controller isn't promising to return a view - you could change the method body to conditionally return a RedirectResult or something else without changing the method definition.