ContentResult vs. string

Question

I recently was asked why to use ContentResult instead of returning string. Unfortunately I could not give a better answer than: \"It is best practi

Answer 1

Two main advantages:

• You can specify the content encoding via the ContentEncoding property
• You can specify the content type (ie, 'text/html') via the ContentType property

Also, if you want to be OO-clean about it, ContentResult, along with all ActionResult derived classes follow the Command Pattern by providing an ExecuteResult command for the MVC pipeline to run.

UPDATE: 19-Nov-2020 The original Command Pattern link (dead link) was no longer working so I updated it to reference a similar Microsoft document. Also, to see a great explanation on the Command Pattern, view this link.