Question

I was looking to improve my page authentication handling in asp.net MVC, so I was reading this guide (http://markfreedman.com/index.php/2012/02/28/handling-session-and-authentication-timeouts-in-asp-net-mvc/) and I tried his example:

[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class | AttributeTargets.Method, Inherited = true, AllowMultiple = true)]
public class SessionExpireFilterAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        HttpContext ctx = HttpContext.Current;

        // If the browser session or authentication session has expired...
        if (ctx.Session["UserName"] == null || !filterContext.HttpContext.Request.IsAuthenticated)
        {
            if (filterContext.HttpContext.Request.IsAjaxRequest())
            {
                // For AJAX requests, we're overriding the returned JSON result with a simple string,
                // indicating to the calling JavaScript code that a redirect should be performed.
                filterContext.Result = new JsonResult { Data = "_Logon_" };
            }
            else
            {
                // For round-trip posts, we're forcing a redirect to Home/TimeoutRedirect/, which
                // simply displays a temporary 5 second notification that they have timed out, and
                // will, in turn, redirect to the logon page.
                filterContext.Result = new RedirectToRouteResult(
                    new RouteValueDictionary {
                        { "Controller", "Home" },
                        { "Action", "Index" }
                });
            }
        }

        base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
    }
}

But I noticed that many of my links are Ajax.ActionLinks like this:

<ul>@Ajax.ActionLink("Employees", "Index", "Employee", new AjaxOptions { UpdateTargetId = "employee_detail" })</ul>

When I do this, the login view is correctly returned after the authentication expires, but returned inside the page div instead of reloading the entire page. Is it possible to set that in a view? To say “if I’m inside a div, just reload the whole page?”

Thanks.

Answer 1

Judging by the documentation of Ajax.ActionLink, it looks like OnFailure will be called if a non-200 status code is returned. In your attribute, be sure to add a status code, something similar to:

filterContext.Result = new JsonResult { Data = "_Logon_" };
filterContext.HttpContext.Response.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.Unauthorized;

Once that’s in there, the OnFailure script name can be added to your ActionLink:

@Ajax.ActionLink("Employees", "Index", "Employee", 
    new AjaxOptions { 
      UpdateTargetId = "employee_detail", 
      OnFailure="myRedirectFunctionName()" 
     })