Question

I have a BaseController in which I put in some data in the ViewData collection by overriding OnActionExecuting.

Now i have an Action in a ChildController that doesn’t need that view data.

For that purpose I created an DontPopulateViewData ActionFilterAttribute that sets a bool on the BaseController that prevents the BaseController from populating the viewdata.

Problem: the ActionFilters OnActionExecuting method is called after the one in BaseController and not before.

Will ActionFilters always be called before overridden OnActionExecuting in base controllers and is there a way to get around this?

Answer 1

In addition to what Marwan Aouida posted and suggested (using an ActionFilter on the base class), I don’t think you’re going to be able to create an ActionFilter that executes before the OnActionExecuting() overload on the base class. The following code:

 [MyActionFilter(Name = "Base", Order = 2)]
 public class MyBaseController : Controller
 {
     protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
     {
        Response.Write("MyBaseController::OnActionExecuting()<br>");
        base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
     }

     protected override void Execute(System.Web.Routing.RequestContext requestContext)
     {
        requestContext.HttpContext.Response.Write("MyBaseController::Execute()<br>");
        base.Execute(requestContext);
     }

    protected override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)
    {
        Response.Write("MyBaseController::OnActionExecuted()<br>");
        base.OnActionExecuted(filterContext);
    }
 }

 public class MyActionFilter : ActionFilterAttribute
 {
    public string Name;

    public override void OnActionExecuted(ActionExecutedContext filterContext)
    {
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Write("MyActionFilter_" + Name + "::OnActionExecuted()<br>");
        base.OnActionExecuted(filterContext);
    }

    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Write("MyActionFilter_" + Name + "::OnActionExecuting()<br>");
        base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
    }
 }

 public class MyTestController : MyBaseController
 {
     [MyActionFilter(Name = "Derived", Order = 1)]
     public void Index()
     {
        Response.Write("MyTestController::Index()<br>");
     }
 }

produces this output:

MyBaseController::Execute()
MyBaseController::OnActionExecuting()
MyActionFilter_Derived::OnActionExecuting()
MyActionFilter_Base::OnActionExecuting()
MyTestController::Index()
MyActionFilter_Base::OnActionExecuted()
MyActionFilter_Derived::OnActionExecuted()
MyBaseController::OnActionExecuted()