HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/json"

will not do the trick. Umbraco /Base will override it with “text/html” if you are returning a string from your service method.

What you need to do is to change your method return signature to “void” and write your data directly to the HttpResponse, like:

HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/json";
HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(stringWriter.ToString());

Umbraco will not override the content type for “void”-methods. Below is a full example.

[RestExtension("Member")]
public class MemberService
{
	[RestExtensionMethod(returnXml = false, allowAll = true)]
	public static void Json()
	{
		var json = "{ \"firstName\": \"John\", \"lastName\": \"Smith\", \"age\": 25 }";

		// Write response and set content type
		HttpContext.Current.Response.ContentType = "application/json";
		HttpContext.Current.Response.Write(json);
	}
}

I have encouraged Eric Carr to release the plugin as open source, but at the moment you can download a MSI installer of the plugin.

team:
  _attributes:
    treeMode: NestedSet
  id:
  company_id:
    type: integer
    treeScopeKey: true
  name:
    type: VARCHAR
    size: 128
    required: true
  lft:
    type: integer
    required: true
    default: 0
    nestedSetLeftKey: true
  rgt:
    type: integer
    required: true
    default: 0
    nestedSetRightKey: true

Currently the only problem I have had is when I need to reassign a new node as root node. My first thought was to make the new node root and add the old root node as child, but Propel doesn’t like that and messes up the left-right values. What I have done is to insert the new node as child of the root node and then swap left-right values, like this:

$node = new Team();
$root = TeamPeer::retrieveRoot($scopeId);
$node->insertAsFirstChildOf($root);

// Swap left-right values
$rootRight = $root->getRightValue();
$root->setLeftValue($node->getLeftValue());
$root->setRightValue($node->getRightValue());

// Make node root
$node->setLeftValue(1);
$node->setRightValue($rootRight);

Display tree using RecursiveIteratorIterator

I retrieve the tree with the static peer method retrieveTree() and display it using the RecursiveIteratorIterator.

$tree = TeamPeer::retrieveTree($scopeId);
$it = new RecursiveIteratorIterator($tree, RecursiveIteratorIterator::SELF_FIRST);
foreach ($it as $item) {
  echo $item;
}

However I wanted to print the items as an indented “list” in a dropdown box. For this I extended the RecursiveIteratorIterator class and implemented its beginChildren() and endChildren() methods.

class MyIndentRecursiveIteratorIterator extends RecursiveIteratorIterator
{
	private $indent = '';
	private $indentStr = '  ';

	public function getIndent()
	{
		return $this->indent;
	}

	public function beginChildren()
	{
		$this->indent = str_repeat($this->indentStr, $this->getDepth());
	}

	public function endChildren()
	{
		$this->indent = str_repeat($this->indentStr, $this->getDepth() - 1);
	}
}

$tree = TeamPeer::retrieveTree($scopeId);
$it = new MyIndentRecursiveIteratorIterator($tree, MyIndentRecursiveIteratorIterator::SELF_FIRST);
foreach ($it as $item) {
  echo $it->getIndent() . $item;
}

Which produces something like below which can be used in a dropdown or similar.

Root
  Child 1
    Child 1.1
    Child 1.2
  Child 2