How can I return a HttpStatusCode from an IQueryable<T>?

Question

I am coding a C# WebApi 2 webservice, and I have a question in regards to returning a HttpStatusCode from an IQueryable<T> webservice function.

If a web service function returns a single object, the following can easily be used:

public async Task<IHttpActionResult> GetItem(int id)
{
    return Content(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized, "Any object");
}

In the following situation, I am not sure on how to return a specified HttpStatusCode :

public IQueryable<T> GetItems()
{
    return Content(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized, "Any object");
}

Can I please have some help with this?

Answer 1

You can throw a HttpResponseException with the appropriate statuscode

public IQueryable<T> GetItems()
{
   throw new HttpResponseException(new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized) { Content = new StringContent("Any object") });
}

Answer 2

In the the first situation, you are still going to be returning the object in the Content method, eg:

public IHttpActionResult GetItem(int id)
{
    return Content(HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized, "Any object");
}

When you execute that method, you would see a "Any object" returned to the client. In Web API 2 IHttpActionResult is essentially a fancy factory around HttpResponseMessage . If you ignore that the return type of the method is IHttpActionResult , you can return an IQueryable by replacing "Any object" with the queryable, eg:

public IHttpActionResult GetItem(int id)
{ 
    IQueryable<object> results;
    return Ok(results);
}

Some more info on action results in Web API can be found here:

http://www.asp.net/web-api/overview/getting-started-with-aspnet-web-api/action-results