What are Action methods in ASP.NET MVC?

Controller actions are methods defined in the controller class and responsible to perform required operations on the user’s inputs like as form values, query strings values etc. with the help of Model and passing the results back to the View. Asp.net MVC has the following built-in ActionResults Type and Helper methods:

1. ViewResult – Returns a ViewResult which renders the specified or default view by using controller View() helper method.
2. PartialViewResult – Returns a PartialViewResult which renders the specified or default partial view (means a view without its layout) by using controller PartialView() helper method.
3. RedirectResult – Returns a RedirectResult which Issues an HTTP 301 or 302 redirection to a specific URL by using controller Redirect() helper method.
4. RedirectToRouteResult – Returns a RedirectToRouteResult which Issues an HTTP 301 or 302 redirection to an action method or specific route entry by using controller RedirectToAction(), RedirectToActionPermanent(), RedirectToRoute(), RedirectToRoutePermanent() helper methods.
5. ContentResult – Returns a ContentResult which renders raw text like as “Hello, DotNet Tricks!” by using controller Content() helper method.
6. JsonResult – Returns a JsonResult which serializes an object in JSON format ( like as “{ “Message”: Hello, World! }”) and renders it by using controller Json() helper method.
7. JavaScriptResult – Returns a JavaScriptResult which renders a snippet of JavaScript code like as “function hello() { alert(Hello, World!); }” by using controller JavaScript() helper method. This is used only in AJAX scenarios.
8. FileResult – Returns a FileResult which renders the contents of a file like as PDF, DOC, Excel etc. by using controller File() helper method.
9. EmptyResult – Returns no result returned by an action. This has no controller helper method.
10. HttpNotFoundResult – Returns an HttpNotFoundResult which renders a 404 HTTP Status Code response by using controller HttpNotFound() helper method.
11. HttpUnauthorizedResult – Returns an HttpUnauthorizedResult which renders a 401 HTTP Status Code (means “not authorized”) response. This has no controller helper method. This is used for authentication (forms authentication or Windows authentication) to ask the user to log in.
12. HttpStatusCodeResult – Returns an HttpStatusCodeResult which renders a specified HTTP code response. This has no controller helper method.