Web API arbitrary response data

This is about .NET Framework, not .NET Core.

 A couple of times a year I have to return a Web API response with a specific status code and serialized object in the body. Sounds easy, but every time this happens I spend 30-60 minutes searching until my fingers bleed for the simplest answer. I always find lots of stupid complex answers in forums, and the MSDN documentation leads you down all sorts of complicated options that involve formatters that assume a specific restrictive response type.

All you need to do is something like this example in a controller:

if (password != "XYZZY")
{
  return return Content(
     HttpStatusCode.Forbidden,
     new MyErrorData() { Code = 123, Message = "Password failure")
  );
}

You can specify any response status you like and put any object of your choice into the body and it will be serialized back to the client using the active formatter. So the object will return as XML or JSON or whatever.

There are so many confusing pre-baked responses like Ok, BadRequest, etc, along with weird variations and overloads that you can't choose the one you need. It turns out that Content() is simplest general purpose way of sending a response.

Web API in .NET Core uses different techniques for what I've discussed here.

Orthogonal Programming