Maximum request length exceeded exception on postback

Question

I'm getting the following exception on a button click, for an asp page which binds more than 500 records in a gridview on page load.

My page does not have any upload control. It contains a textbox, button and the gridview. Does anyone know why this is happening.

Exception Description:

Maximum request length exceeded.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. 

Answer 1

A postback sends back the viewstate of every control - if you have a huge datagrid, then when the browser reposts that to the server, this is why you are getting the exception.

Your two options are:

1. Set EnableViewState="false" on your GridView if you do not need the viewstate, so it's not so bloated and the postback is a reasonable size,

2. Increase the maximum request size in web.config as shown below:

   <configuration>
       <system.web>
           <httpRuntime maxRequestLength="32768" />
       </system.web>
   </configuration>
   

Hope this helps