ASP.NET MVC HandleError

Question

How do I go about the [HandleError] filter in asp.net MVC Preview 5?
I set the customErrors in my Web.config file

<customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="Error.aspx">   <error statusCode="403" redirect="NoAccess.htm"/>   <error statusCode="404" redirect="FileNotFound.htm"/> </customErrors> 

and put [HandleError] above my Controller Class like this:

[HandleError] public class DSWebsiteController: Controller {     [snip]     public ActionResult CrashTest()     {         throw new Exception("Oh Noes!");     } } 

Then I let my controllers inherit from this class and call CrashTest() on them. Visual studio halts at the error and after pressing f5 to continue, I get rerouted to Error.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/sxi.mvc/CrashTest (where sxi is the name of the used controller. Off course the path cannot be found and I get "Server Error in '/' Application." 404.

This site was ported from preview 3 to 5. Everything runs (wasn't that much work to port) except the error handling. When I create a complete new project the error handling seems to work.

Ideas?

--Note--
Since this question has over 3K views now, I thought it would be beneficial to put in what I'm currently (ASP.NET MVC 1.0) using. In the mvc contrib project there is a brilliant attribute called "RescueAttribute" You should probably check it out too ;)

Answer 1

[HandleError] 

When you provide only the HandleError attribute to your class (or to your action method for that matter), then when an unhandled exception occurs MVC will look for a corresponding View named "Error" first in the Controller's View folder. If it can't find it there then it will proceed to look in the Shared View folder (which should have an Error.aspx file in it by default)

[HandleError(ExceptionType = typeof(SqlException), View = "DatabaseError")] [HandleError(ExceptionType = typeof(NullReferenceException), View = "LameErrorHandling")] 

You can also stack up additional attributes with specific information about the type of exception you are looking for. At that point, you can direct the Error to a specific view other than the default "Error" view.

For more information, take a look at Scott Guthrie's blog post about it.

Answer 2

It should also be noted that errors that don't set the http error code to 500

(e.g. UnauthorizedAccessException)

will not be handled by the HandleError filter.