Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ControllerBase.Content method does not set StatusCode of returned ContentResult object

[AlexPiksel]

Describe the bug

When using the Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ControllerBase.Content(string content) method to create a ContentResult object in a WebApi project, the object returned has a null value for the int? StatusCode property. This contradicts the description of the method, which states that the method:

"Creates a Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc.ContentResult object with Microsoft.AspNetCore.Http.StatusCodes.Status200OK by specifying a content string."

Note that this seems to be turned into a 200 somewhere in the pipeline between the API Controller and a browser client, so this is not visible in normal operation. However, if you are unit testing the Controller and checking the value of the StatusCode, this will result in tests failing incorrectly.

As a workaround, I'm just manually creating my own ContentResult objects with StatusCode set appropriately, rather than using the Content method.

To Reproduce

Using ASP.NET Core 2.2.0, run the following code as a method in an ApiController class:

[HttpGet]
public IActionResult GetContentResult()
{
	var response = Content("Foo");
	if (response.StatusCode.HasValue == false) {
		throw new Exception("StatusCode is not set");
	}
	return response;
}

Send a get request to this method. The exception will be thrown.

Expected behavior

Method should return a ContentResult with StatusCode set as per the method description, consistent with behaviour of other ControllerBase methods like Ok(string)

Additional context

dotnet --info output:

.NET Core SDK (reflecting any global.json):
 Version:   2.2.101
 Commit:    236713b0b7

Runtime Environment:
 OS Name:     Windows
 OS Version:  10.0.16299
 OS Platform: Windows
 RID:         win10-x64
 Base Path:   C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.2.101\

Host (useful for support):
  Version: 2.2.0
  Commit:  1249f08fed

.NET Core SDKs installed:
  1.0.0-preview2-003131 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
  1.1.10 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
  2.1.202 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
  2.1.302 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
  2.1.402 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
  2.1.403 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
  2.1.500 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
  2.1.502 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]
  2.2.101 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk]

.NET Core runtimes installed:
  Microsoft.AspNetCore.All 2.1.2 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.All]
  Microsoft.AspNetCore.All 2.1.4 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.All]
  Microsoft.AspNetCore.All 2.1.5 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.All]
  Microsoft.AspNetCore.All 2.1.6 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.All]
  Microsoft.AspNetCore.All 2.2.0 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.All]
  Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 2.1.2 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
  Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 2.1.4 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
  Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 2.1.5 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
  Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 2.1.6 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
  Microsoft.AspNetCore.App 2.2.0 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.AspNetCore.App]
  Microsoft.NETCore.App 1.0.1 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
  Microsoft.NETCore.App 1.0.12 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
  Microsoft.NETCore.App 1.1.9 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
  Microsoft.NETCore.App 2.0.9 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
  Microsoft.NETCore.App 2.1.2 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
  Microsoft.NETCore.App 2.1.4 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
  Microsoft.NETCore.App 2.1.5 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
  Microsoft.NETCore.App 2.1.6 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]
  Microsoft.NETCore.App 2.2.0 [C:\Program Files\dotnet\shared\Microsoft.NETCore.App]

[mkArtakMSFT]

Thanks for contacting us, @AlexPiksel.
@pranavkm, can you please look into this? Thanks!

[pranavkm]

We don't set the status code for action result types that are similar e.g. ObjectResult, FileResult etc. Fixing the doc comment would be the way to go here.