WebAPI redirect not working?

Question

I'm trying the following:

   [System.Web.Http.AcceptVerbs("PUT")]
   public HttpResponseMessage MakePost(PostDto post) {
        try {
            var response = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.Redirect); // tried MOVED too
            response.Headers.Location = new Uri("google.com");
            return response;
        } catch (Exception e) {
            ErrorSignal.FromCurrentContext().Raise(e);
            return Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.InternalServerError, e);
        }
    }

Which seems to be partially working - when this is called, I see the POST request in chrome debugger. Nothing appears in the Response tab, but then I see a GET request sent to the new URI, yet the page never changes, and my AJAX call throws an error:

var options = {
        url: postUrl,
        type: type,
        dataType: 'json',
        xhrFields: {
            withCredentials: true
        }
    };
return $.ajax(options)
        .done(function (response) {
            // do stuff
        })
        .fail(function (response) {
            alert('error) // this gets hit - shouldn't the browser have redirected at this point?
        }).complete(function () {
            // stuff
        });
};

If I inspect response, I see a Status 200 "OK".... I'm so confused.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

This happens because the code issuing the AJAX request follows the redirect, not the browser. This will then fail because the AJAX request tries to access a different domain. If you want to redirect the browser, you should return some JSON result or a custom HTTP header, manually pick this up in your jQuery, and do the redirect there.

In your controller:

var response = new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.OK);
response.Headers.Add("FORCE_REDIRECT", "http://google.com");

Then add a success callback to your AJAX call:

success: function(data, textStatus, jqXHR) {
    if (jqXHR.getResponseHeader('FORCE_REDIRECT') !== null){
        window.location = jqXHR.getResponseHeader('FORCE_REDIRECT');
        return;
    }
}

In the past, I've wrapped the controller result up in a custom action result class for reuse.