Must ASP.NET MVC Controller Methods Return ActionResult?

Question

Being new to ASP.NET MVC, I\'ve been wondering about the signature of Controller methods. In all the examples I\'ve seen, they always seem to return ActionResult, even if th

Answer 1

Always return the most accurate type you can return. So you should return a ViewResult when the action always shows a view. I would only use ActionResult when you return in ViewResult in some cases (invalid posted data) or a RedirectToRouteResult in other cases.

With some advanced actionfilter/executing scenario's, you can even return totally different things that have nothing to do with ActionResult.