Question

How do I gracefully handle errors when trying to connect to a database that may be down, or given an incorrect connection string in MVC 4?

I have my string in Web.config and the way it accesses the database is just instantiating my class derived from DBContext in each controller, like so:

private DBEntities db = new DBEntities("database");

This works fine if the database is up and everything is correct, but if it’s not, the pages on my web site display this error:

Exception Details: System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: The network path was not found

Obviously I don’t want this to appear, what I’d like to do is have a way to try catch the error and display a custom error page (similar to 404 Page Not Found).

Thank you.

Answer 1

Do the initialisation in the function

private DBEntities db;

// then in your function attempt to initialise
try{

db = new DBEntities("database");

db.Connection.Open();

}
catch(Exception ex){

if(db.Connection != ConnectionState.Closed){

db.Connection.Close();
db.Dispose();

//go to error page
}

}