Question

I am just wondering about the situation where the user may request through unexpected query. Suppose i have the controller action

  public ViewResult Details(int id)
        {
            Description description = db.Descriptions.Find(id);
            return View(description);
        } 

The ideal query in the browser will be /admin/Details?id=1.
What if the user entered the id=-1 or id=a or any other unexpected inputs. How to handle this?

Answer 1

To ensure numeric values, you could add id = @"\d+" route constraint, and your action will be hit only if requested id is numeric, otherwise it will return http not found;

And in all other cases you should always check user input, something like this:

public ActionResult Details(int id)
{
    Description description = db.Descriptions.Find(id); 

    if(description == null)
    {
          return new HttpStatusCodeResult(404);
    }

    return View(description);
}

And user will be notified that he requested resource with invalid identifier