Introducing .NET 4.0: with Visual Studio 2010

9.3. Returning Results in Different Formats

WDS services can return data in the following formats:

• AtomPub

• JSON

• XML

AtomPub is the default format that is returned, and since WDS 1.5 you have control over how elements are mapped to AtomPub elements.

Let's look at how to return results in JSON format using jQuery and then how to access a WDS service from a console application.

9.3.1. Using JSON with JavaScript

JSON is a format commonly used by web applications since it is much less verbose than XML. JSON is also understood by many JavaScript frameworks and libraries. If you want to have WCF Data Services format your results as JSON, simply set the Accept header to application/json when making a request.

The following example shows how to use jQuery ...