IE9 JSON Data “do you want to open or save this file”

Question

Started testing my jQuery applications with IE9. Looks like I may be in for some trouble here. I noticed that when I return JSON data back to the Javascript methods I always

Answer 1

I also faced this problem yesterday with WebAPI which returned a list of URLs (of asynchronously uploaded files).

Just set content type to "text/html" instead of default "application/json; charset=UTF-8" of WebAPI services. I got response as a JSON string and then used $.parseJSON to convert it to JSON object.

public async Task<HttpResponseMessage> Upload()
{
  // ...
  var response = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, files);
  response.Content.Headers.ContentType = new MediaTypeHeaderValue("text/html");
  return response;
}

// result is an iframe's body content that received response.
$.each($.parseJSON(result.html()), function (i, item)
{
  console.log(item.Url);
});

Answer 2

(Answer originally posted for this question.)

If using MVC, one way of handling this is to implement a base controller in which you override (hide) the Json(object) method as follows:

public class ExtendedController : Controller
{
    protected new JsonResult Json(object data)
    {
        if (!Request.AcceptTypes.Contains("application/json"))
            return base.Json(data, "text/plain");
        else
            return base.Json(data);
    }
}

Now, your controllers can all inherit ExtendedController and simply call return Json(model); ...

• without modifying the response content type for those browsers which play nicely (not <=IE9 !)
• without having to remember to use Json(data, "text/plain") in your various Ajax action methods

This works with json requests which would otherwise display the "Open or Save" message in IE8 & IE9 such as those made by jQuery File Upload

Answer 3

If anyone is using ASP.net MVC and trying to fix this issue - I used the following built in methods in the MVC framework. Simply update the content Type and encoding on the JsonResult.

public ActionResult Index(int id)
{
        // Fetch some data
        var someData = GetSomeData();

        // Return and update content type and encoding
        return Json(someData, "text/html", System.Text.Encoding.UTF8,
                        JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
}

This fixed the issue for me!

Answer 4

In my case when contentType in response header is "application/json; charset=UTF-8", the IE 9 shows that Prompt. But changed to "text/html" then the prompt does not show, although all otter browsers are fine with the "application/json; charset=UTF-8".

Answer 5

Actually, you were right @EricLaw. After setting the content type in the Json result, it worked. I had to add the following lines:

 result.ContentEncoding = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8; 
 result.ContentType = "application/json; charset=UTF-8