ASP.NET Web API returns 404 for PUT only on some servers

Question

I have written a site that uses ASP.NET MVC Web API and everything is working nicely until I put it on the staging server. The site works fine on my local machine and on the dev web server. Both dev and staging servers are Windows Server 2008 R2.

The problem is this: basically the site works, but there are some API calls that use the HTTP PUT method. These fail on staging returning a 404, but work fine elsewhere.

The first problem that I came across and fixed was in Request Filtering. But still getting the 404.

I have turned on tracing in IIS and get the following problem.

168. -MODULE_SET_RESPONSE_ERROR_STATUS  ModuleName IIS Web Core  Notification 16  HttpStatus 404  HttpReason Not Found  HttpSubStatus 0  ErrorCode 2147942402  ConfigExceptionInfo   Notification MAP_REQUEST_HANDLER  ErrorCode The system cannot find the file specified. (0x80070002)  

The configs are the same on dev and staging, matter of fact the whole site is a direct copy.

Why would the GETs and POSTs work, but not the PUTs?

Answer 1

For those of you who do not have WebDAV enabled but are still running into this issue using MVC 4's Web API's...

Steve Michelotti documented a solution that worked for me here.

At the end of the day, I enabled all verbs (verb="*") to the ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0 handler in my web config.

<system.webServer>     <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" />     <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" />         <handlers>             <remove name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" />             <add name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" path="*." verb="*" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" resourceType="Unspecified" requireAccess="Script" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" />         </handlers> </system.webServer> 

Answer 2

Those IIS servers have web-dav module installed on them and i bet it is not needed and it was installed because the person installing ticked all boxes.

Just remove web-dav from iis.

Alternatively use web.config to remove web dav module:

<system.webServer>     <modules>         <remove name="WebDAVModule" />     </modules>     ...