Looking for a quick cut and paste, I found crazy composer modules and overcomplicated blog articles. Thought I'd help Occam out a bit with this very simple blog entry! BTW I lied, we're going to skip JsonModel.
Sorry for the crappy indentation, trying to make it fit in Squarespace. JSON_PRETTY_PRINT came along with PHP 5.4
public function prettyJsonAction()
{
$contacts = array( 'foo' => 'bar' );
$response = $this->getResponse();
$response
->getHeaders()
->addHeaderLine( 'Content-Type', 'application/json' );
$response
->setContent(
json_encode( $contacts, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT )
);
return $response;
}