Question

I have set up an mvc app with an _error.cshtml that is set to catch exceptions I throw in the controller.

I also have a few ajax posts on some pages that checks for errors and then it does something else.

On the server, I have a filter on all exceptions and then check if it is an ajax request and return something that can be deserialized on the client. The problem is that if I do not set the post response status code to 500 then ajax will not see this error and I can’t show a nice message. If I set the status to 500 I get the default IIS error message stating something happened on the server.

I would like to handle some errors on the page in the ajax results but maintain the generic error handling. Is this an IIS setting to allow custom 500 message per site? The web.config Custom Error On|Off makes no difference in my case.

Answer 1

The filter you have on all exceptions that is checking if its an ajax request, is that a filter made on your own?

I had a slightly similar issue, and I had to make sure the flag TrySkipIisCustomErrors was set as true in order to avoid the standard IIS error.
This flag is located on the Response object of the HttpContext.

This is also done by the standard HandleError filter, pay attention to the last line in its implementation of the OnException method:

    public virtual void OnException(ExceptionContext filterContext) {
        if (filterContext == null) {
            throw new ArgumentNullException("filterContext");
        }
        if (filterContext.IsChildAction) {
            return;
        }

        // If custom errors are disabled, we need to let the normal ASP.NET exception handler
        // execute so that the user can see useful debugging information.
        if (filterContext.ExceptionHandled || !filterContext.HttpContext.IsCustomErrorEnabled) {
            return;
        }

        Exception exception = filterContext.Exception;

        // If this is not an HTTP 500 (for example, if somebody throws an HTTP 404 from an action method),
        // ignore it.
        if (new HttpException(null, exception).GetHttpCode() != 500) {
            return;
        }

        if (!ExceptionType.IsInstanceOfType(exception)) {
            return;
        }

        string controllerName = (string)filterContext.RouteData.Values["controller"];
        string actionName = (string)filterContext.RouteData.Values["action"];
        HandleErrorInfo model = new HandleErrorInfo(filterContext.Exception, controllerName, actionName);
        filterContext.Result = new ViewResult {
            ViewName = View,
            MasterName = Master,
            ViewData = new ViewDataDictionary<HandleErrorInfo>(model),
            TempData = filterContext.Controller.TempData
        };
        filterContext.ExceptionHandled = true;
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Clear();
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.StatusCode = 500;

        // Certain versions of IIS will sometimes use their own error page when
        // they detect a server error. Setting this property indicates that we
        // want it to try to render ASP.NET MVC's error page instead.
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.TrySkipIisCustomErrors = true;
    }