A comment on my last post, "Custom output for EPiServer pages", said that it would me more clean to have content rendered based on content negotiation, rather than on a querystring parameter.
I don’t look on an url segment as a querystring, and you cannot always force the Content-Type or Accept header for the one browsing your site. So, I think requesting a different output through the url has it’s merits and is also a clean solution.
That being said, it does not take much to use the custom output library I created in the way Arve suggested. Display Channels to the rescue.
public class JsonChannel : DisplayChannel
{
public override string ChannelName
{
get
{
return OutputConstants.JSON;
}
}
public override bool IsActive(HttpContextBase context)
{
if (context == null)
{
return false;
}
return ChannelSettings.Instance.EnableJSON && context.Request.AcceptTypes != null &&
context.Request.AcceptTypes.Any(t => t.Equals(OutputConstants.ApplicationJSON, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
}
}
In your template you can then render the output as requested based on the Active Channel.
List<DisplayChannel> channels =
ServiceLocator.Current.GetInstance<DisplayChannelService>()
.GetActiveChannels(new HttpContextWrapper(HttpContext.Current))
.ToList();
bool isJsonChannel =
channels.Any(
c => string.Equals(c.ChannelName, OutputConstants.JSON, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase));
if (isJsonChannel)
{
JsonOutputFormat jsonOutputFormat = new JsonOutputFormat();
jsonOutputFormat.HandleFormat(currentPage, new HttpContextWrapper(HttpContext.Current));
}
That’s it basically. I created a base template page that handles the different outputs, or you can use the method from the outputhelper.
OutputHelper.UseActiveChannel(this.CurrentPage);
The complete add-on to the output formats can be found on GitHub
EPiServer Development 
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