Being new to ASP.NET MVC, I&#39;ve been wondering about the signature of Controller methods. In all the examples I&#39;ve seen, they always seem to return ActionResult, even if they actually return a ViewResult instance or similar.

Here&#39;s a commonly seen example:

    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        return this.View();
    }

In such a case, wouldn&#39;t it make more sense to declare the method as `public ViewResult Index()`, and get stronger type support?

Experimentation indicates that this works, so it seems possible.

I do realize that there may be situations where the polymorphism is desired (e.g. if you want to redirect only in certain situations, but show a view in other situations), but if the method *always* returns a view, I&#39;d find a ViewResult more desirable.

In terms of future compatibility, ActionResult obviously provides a more robust signature, but if one controls the entire code base, it&#39;s always possible to change a method&#39;s signature to a more general return type if that should become necessary in the future.

Are the any other considerations that I&#39;m not aware of, or should I just go ahead and declare my controller methods with specific return types?

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Must ASP.NET MVC Controller Methods Return ActionResult?