Intermittent asp.net mvc exception: “A public action method ABC could not be found on controller XYZ.”

Question

I'm getting an intermittent exception saying that asp.net mvc can’t find the action method. Here’s the exception:

A public action method 'Fill' could not be found on controller 'Schoon.Form.Web.Controllers.ChrisController'.

I think I have the routing set up correctly because this application works most of the time. Here is the controller’s action method.

[ActionName("Fill")] [AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get | HttpVerbs.Post), UserIdFilter, DTOFilter] public ActionResult Fill(int userId, int subscriberId, DisplayMode? mode) {      //… } 

The route:

routes.MapRoute(         "SchoonForm",         "Form/Fill/{subscriberId}",         new { controller = "ChrisController", action = "Fill" },         new { subscriberId = @"\d+" }     ); 

And here is the stack:

System.Web.HttpException: A public action method 'Fill' could not be found on controller 'Schoon.Form.Web.Controllers.ChrisController'. at System.Web.Mvc.Controller.HandleUnknownAction(String actionName) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\Controller.cs:line 197 at System.Web.Mvc.Controller.ExecuteCore() in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\Controller.cs:line 164 at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\ControllerBase.cs:line 76 at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.System.Web.Mvc.IController.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\ControllerBase.cs:line 87 at System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContextBase httpContext) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\MvcHandler.cs:line 80 at System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext httpContext) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\MvcHandler.cs:line 68 at System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.System.Web.IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext httpContext) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\MvcHandler.cs:line 104 at System.Web.HttpApplication.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)

Here is an example of my filters they all work the same way:

public class UserIdFilter : ActionFilterAttribute {     public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)     {         const string Key = "userId";          if (filterContext.ActionParameters.ContainsKey(Key))         {             filterContext.ActionParameters[Key] = // get the user id from session or cookie         }          base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);     } } 

Thanks, Chris

Answer 1

We found the answer. We looked into our web logs. It showed that we were receiving some weird http actions (verbs/methods) like OPTIONS, PROPFIND and HEAD.

This seems to the cause of some of theses exceptions. This explains why it was intermittent.

We reproduced the issue with the curl.exe tool:

curl.exe -X OPTIONS http://localhost/v2.3.1.0/(S(boztz1aquhzurevtjwllzr45))/Form/Fill/273 curl.exe -X PROPFIND http://localhost/v2.3.1.0/(S(boztz1aquhzurevtjwllzr45))/Form/Fill/273 curl.exe -X HEAD http://localhost/v2.3.1.0/(S(boztz1aquhzurevtjwllzr45))/Form/Fill/273 

The fix we used was to add an authorization section to web.config:

<authorization>   <deny users="*" verbs="OPTIONS, PROPFIND, HEAD"/> </authorization>