Detect that asp.net http headers already sent

Question

I am adding headers to a page as follows: Page.Response.AddHeader("foo", "bar");

Depending upon previous processing, sometimes this fails with "Server cannot append header after HTTP headers have been sent." I am dealing with this by enclosing Page.Response.AddHeader("foo", "bar"); within a try-catch construct. However, to keep things cleaner and avoid generating an exception is there any way to detect that the headers have already been sent? (btw if I try evaluating Page.Response.Headers then I get the following error: "This operation requires IIS integrated pipeline mode")

Thanks

Answer 1

You can use an HttpModule to register for the PreSendRequestHeaders event. When it gets called, write a value to HttpContext.Current.Items indicating that the headers are being sent – and then everywhere else in your code you check the value in HttpContext.Current.Items to see if its been sent yet.

Answer 2

As of .NET 4.5.2, you can do this using the now-public HeadersWritten property of HttpResponse (see the msdn docs):

if (HttpContext.Current.Response.HeadersWritten) { ... }