Question

I am trying to handle all exceptions at my c# MVC application.
All controllers inherit from BaseController, so I thought I could override the OnException (protected override void OnException(ExceptionContext filterContext)).
But I don´t want to redirect to an error page, what I would like to do is to go back to the page that originated the request keeping its state. So if I had a form with an input filled by user, after handling the exception I want to show back that form with its input with the information filled by user.

Note: not all views are strongly typed.

example:

USER: myuser <– text entered in input tag

After handling exception I want to go back to previous view showing exception message.

USER: myuser <– text entered in input tag
My exception message

Answer 1

Validation should not be treated as unhandled exceptions! Please read about Model Validation in ASP.NET MVC in order to handle this scenario.

Unhandled exception is, as its name suggests, something that occurs only in exceptional cases. An exceptional case is something that when it occurs your application cannot process the request. So it doesn’t make sense to redirect to a known state because there’s no state when an unhandled exception occurs. The best you could do in this case is log the exception for further analysis and redirect the user to a 500 error page informing him that something went wrong.

Conclusion:

• Use Model Validation to handle validation logic
• Use OnException for unhandled exceptions.