How do you trigger the “error” callback in a jQuery AJAX call using ASP.NET MVC?

NOTE: Hey, this was posted before ASP.Net MVC even hit 1.0, and I haven’t even looked at the framework since then. You should probably stop upvoting this.

Do something like this:

Response.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.BadRequest;
actionResult = this.Content("Error message here");

The status code should change depending on the nature of the error; generally, 4xx for user-generated problems and 5xx for server-side problems.