Redirect to error page - c#

I want to use Response.Redirect to redirect the browser when an exception occurs.
I also want to pass the exception message to my error page.
For example:
string URL = "Page2.aspx?Exception=" + ex.ToString()
Response.Redirect(URL)
Can it be done? Is this the right syntax?

Instead of Response.Redirect, which sends a response to the client asking it to request a different page, you should call Server.Transfer, which runs a different page immediately and sends that page directly to the client.
You can then put the exception in HttpContext.Items and read it from HttpContext.Items in your error page.
For example:
catch (Exception ex) {
HttpContext.Current.Items.Add("Exception", ex);
Server.Transfer("Error.aspx");
}
In Error.aspx, you can then get the exception like this:
<%
Exception error;
if (!HttpContext.Current.Items.Contains("Exception"))
Response.Redirect("/"); //There was no error; the user typed Error.aspx into the browser
error = (Exception)HttpContext.Current.Items["Exception"];
%>

Yes that would work (with some semicolons added of course and you probably just want to send the exception message):
String URL = "Page2.aspx?Exception=" + ex.Message;
Response.Redirect(URL);

As Andrew said, it should work.
However, if you're looking for Error Management, you're better off using Server.GetLastError() so you get the full Exception object including stack trace.
Here's an MSDN article that deals with Application Errors in general and uses Server.GetLastError().

Typically I would have panels in my page and toggle visibility in the catch block to display a friendly message to the user. I would also include an emailed report to myself detailing the error message.
try
{
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
formPanel.Visible = false;
errorPanel.Visible = true;
// Log error
LogError(ex);
}
As for reporting/forwarding the error to another page:
string errorURL = "ErrorPage.aspx?message=" + ex.Message;
Response.Redirect(errorURL, true);
And don't forget ELMAH!
http://bit.ly/HsnFh

We would always advise against redirecting to a .aspx page on an error condition.
In the past we've seen scenarios where a fundamental issue with the application has caused an error to occur, which has in turn redirected to an error.aspx page, which it's self has errored resulted in an endless redirection loop.
We strongly advise people to use a .htm page or something which is not handled by the ASP.NET framework for error pages.
There is built in support within ASP.NET using the customErrors section of the Web.config to automatically handle error redirection for you.
customError tag
You can look into global exception handling too, this can be managed via the Application_OnError event which you can find within the global.asax
Thanks,
Phil
http://exceptioneer.com

Related

Response is not being written after Response.End() when request departs from asp:multiview or ajax

I wrote a HttpModule to intercept, evaluate and authorize requests, checking if logged user has appropriate access to the url being requested, in a pretty old legacy system written in ASP.NET 2.0(Web pages, not Web app), whose customer does not want to port to a newer framework. Restrictions have been loaded and cached at login time.
Everything works fine, except when some page contains an <asp:MultiView> component or when there is a button that launch an ajax method. When one of these situations occur, and user doesn't have rights to access that url, an alert box pops up with an "Unknown error" message, that came from a ThreadAbortException thrown by Response.End() method.
The question is: Why does my "Unauthorized" message is being overwritten by "Unknown Error" from the exception, only on these two situations?
Is there a way of doing an Url Authorization system, using database and caching and without cluttering Web.config with roles like those older ASP.NET samples?
// My module init method.
public void Init(HttpApplication context)
{
context.PreRequestHandlerExecute += new EventHandler(context_PreRequestHandlerExecute);
// PreRequestHandlerExecute is the first stage at ASP.NET Pipeline
// where we could get a fulfilled Session variable
}
private void context_PreRequestHandlerExecute(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
HttpApplication application = (HttpApplication)sender;
HttpContext context = application.Context;
// additional request filtering/validation/etc.
LoggedUser user = (LoggedUser)application.Session["user"];
string path = context.Request.Path;
// more checks and rules...
if (!checkUserAuthorization(path, user))
{
context.Response.Write("<script>alert('Unauthorized. Contact your manager.');</script>");
context.Response.Write("<script>window.history.back();</script>");
context.Response.StatusCode = 403;
context.Response.End();
}
}
EDIT: What I've already tried (with no goal):
Response.OutputStream.Close();
Response.Flush();
HttpApplication.CompleteRequest();
it's by design. you must ignore it and add a catch for that exception.
try {
context.Response.End();
}
catch{}
Foreword
After a lot of research, finally I got it. Considering ASP.NET 2.0, concerning AJAX operations, the project I'm working uses a Microsoft component called "Atlas", which in turn got renamed to ASP.NET AJAX. At the time this system was written, the developers used the beta ASP.NET AJAX (codename "Atlas") to address all ajax and partial rendering needs.
I needed to dig deeper in source code (thanks to Reflector), to understand and inspect from where does that "Unknown Error" comes.
Inside the Microsoft.Web.Atlas, there is a file named Microsoft.Web.Resources.ScriptLibrary.*.Atlas.js (where * could be Debug or Release) which is rendered at runtime through a WebResource.axd "proxy".
This javascript file have a bug, because it expects to ASP.NET request always return an HTTP 200 (OK) response code, which in my code it's not happening (I'm returning a 403 Forbidden code at my module).
Code
From Microsoft.Web.Resources.ScriptLibrary.*.Atlas.js taken from WebResource.axd:
this._onFormSubmitCompleted = function(sender, eventArgs) {
var isErrorMode = true;
var errorNode;
var delta;
if (sender.get_statusCode() == 200) {
delta = sender.get_xml();
if (delta) {
errorNode = delta.selectSingleNode("/delta/pageError");
if (!errorNode) {
isErrorMode = false;
}
}
}
if (isErrorMode) {
if (errorNode) {
pageErrorMessage = errorNode.attributes.getNamedItem('message').nodeValue;
}
else {
pageErrorMessage = 'Unknown error';
}
this._enterErrorMode(pageErrorMessage);
return;
}
// Code continues.
}
From this code, we can see that since response code is not an 200 OK, that errorNode variable won't be set, and this if (errorNode) statement will always be false.
In this case, I was left with two options: Always return HTTP 200 and modify all pages that have an <atlas:ScriptManager> with and add an ErrorTemplate tag on each, or supersede that script with one that consider non-HTTP 200 responses, loading it below </form> tag at the Master page.
There is a lot of tutorials on how to do a proper error handling when using ScriptManager and UpdatePanels (an official one here), by subscribing to the AsyncPostBackError event), but this beta version (Atlas) simply don't have this event.

Server cannot set status after HTTP headers have been sent - ELMAH

I have been receiving this error through ELMAH. Even though the program completes it's intended actions, I still receive this error through ELMAH and I'd like to know why and to fix it. I've gone through other threads and tried to use those suggestions but nothing I've read so far doesn't seem to work.
It's intended action is to create an excel document and then redirect the user to the page they were just on.
ActionResult:
public ActionResult ExportClaimNumberReport(int ClientID, string ClaimNo) {
ClaimNumberViewModel model = ClaimNumberReport(ClientID, ClaimNo);
CreateExcelFile.CreateExcelDocument(
model.ReportData.ToList(),
model.ReportDescription + (".xlsx"),
HttpContext.ApplicationInstance.Response);
ViewBag.client = client;
Response.Buffer = true;
Response.Redirect(Request.UrlReferrer.ToString());
if (!Response.IsRequestBeingRedirected) {
Response.Redirect("/Error/ErrorHandler");
}
return RedirectToAction("ErrorHandler", "Error");
}
If you need anymore info, just let me know
You will get the error because you are doing 2 redirects.
Once here
Response.Redirect(Request.UrlReferrer.ToString());
And then again here:
return RedirectToAction("ErrorHandler", "Error");
So the first redirect will write a redirect header to the response stream, then the second would try to do it again, but obviously you can't send http headers to the browser twice so it throws an exception. However the user won't notice because by the time the exception is thrown the browser has already been told to redirect elsewhere.
What you want to do is just call the Redirect method as the return statement from your controller action.
So replace all this:
Response.Redirect(Request.UrlReferrer.ToString());
if (!Response.IsRequestBeingRedirected) // this would always be false anyway
{
Response.Redirect("/Error/ErrorHandler");
}
return RedirectToAction("ErrorHandler", "Error");
With this:
return Redirect(Request.UrlReferrer.ToString())
Although why you are redirecting the browser back to the referring page is unclear.

I am not being able to see a detailed output of a server error?

In asp.net, i can't see the detailed message of the server when an error is present. I mean, when you open a browser and navigate to say http://[errorpage].com and the page shows something like "internal server error - the server is busy" - surely you know that the server is busy...but with my application i get only error 503 - but i cant go as far as mozilla browser goes and cannot see the entire error message. I tried to catch and display the exception - but...no. also i tried to parse the source with regular exp. - but i guess net stops whenever error is present and cannot proceed to parsing - also...without trycatching: same thing.
As a rule, don't enable this on live websites. In your web.config, add/edit the following:
<customErrors mode="Off" />
This will start showing detailed info about the error. But again, DO NOT do this on a live server, or at least not permanently, as it is a security hazard.
The best way to do that is to implement error handling into your code, then save errors somewhere (database, file ...) Then you can look into your file and get a full error
e.g.
try {
//your code here
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
//write to file ex.ToString() to see whole stack trace, or ex.Message to see just message like "index out of bounds"
}
and also if you want to get errors in browser then turn it on in your config file
look at this link for details http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/h0hfz6fc.aspx
Your question is a little manic, but you've got to consider what error handling is going on up the stack if this is happening:
try{
//Something
}
catch(Exception){
//Handle it some how
throw new Exception("Broken");
}
then this will loose all of the call stack before the new exception is thrown. If this is happening it can be fixed like this:
try{
//Something
}
catch(Exception){
//Handle it some how
throw;
}
this continues to throw the original exception with stack trace.
If you turn on ASP.NET Health Monitoring, then ASP.NET will log details of the error to the Windows Event Log or any other destination you specify.

How to catch ConfigurationErrorsException for violating maxRequestLength?

I am limiting file size users can upload to the site from Web.config. As explained here, it should throw a ConfigurationErrorsException if size is not accepted. I tried to catch it from the action method or controller for upload requests but no luck. Connection is resetted and I can't get it to show an error page.
I tried catching it in BeginRequest event but no matter what I do the exception is unhandled.
Here's the code:
protected void Application_BeginRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{
HttpContext context = ((HttpApplication)sender).Context;
try
{
if (context.Request.ContentLength > maxRequestLength)
{
IServiceProvider provider = (IServiceProvider)context;
HttpWorkerRequest workerRequest = (HttpWorkerRequest)provider.GetService(typeof(HttpWorkerRequest));
// Check if body contains data
if (workerRequest.HasEntityBody())
{
// get the total body length
int requestLength = workerRequest.GetTotalEntityBodyLength();
// Get the initial bytes loaded
int initialBytes = 0;
if (workerRequest.GetPreloadedEntityBody() != null)
initialBytes = workerRequest.GetPreloadedEntityBody().Length;
if (!workerRequest.IsEntireEntityBodyIsPreloaded())
{
byte[] buffer = new byte[512];
// Set the received bytes to initial bytes before start reading
int receivedBytes = initialBytes;
while (requestLength - receivedBytes >= initialBytes)
{
// Read another set of bytes
initialBytes = workerRequest.ReadEntityBody(buffer, buffer.Length);
// Update the received bytes
receivedBytes += initialBytes;
}
initialBytes = workerRequest.ReadEntityBody(buffer, requestLength - receivedBytes);
}
}
}
}
catch(HttpException)
{
context.Response.Redirect(this.Request.Url.LocalPath + "?action=exception");
}
}
But I still get this:
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.
Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: Maximum request length exceeded.
Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Update:
What method raises the exception anyway? If I read the request it raises exception If I don't read it at all, I get "101 Connection Reset" in browser. What can be done here?
You cant catch error in action method becouse exception comes earlier, but you can catch it here
protected void Application_Error() {
var lastError = Server.GetLastError();
if(lastError !=null && lastError is HttpException && lastError.Message.Contains("exceed")) {
Response.Redirect("~/errors/RequestLengthExceeded");
}
}
Actualy when file size exceeds limits HttpException error arise.
There is also IIS limit on content - wich can't be catched in application. IIS 7 throws
HTTP Error 404.13 - Not Found The
request filtering module is configured
to deny a request that exceeds the
request content length.
You can google it, there is a lot of information about this iis error.
There is no way to do it right without a client-side help. You cannot determine if the request is too long unless you read all of it. If you read each request to the end, anyone come and keep your server busy. If you just look at content length and drop the request, other side is going to think there is a connection problem. It's nothing you can do with error handling, it's a shortcoming of HTTP.
You can use Flash or Javascript components to make it right because this thing can't fail nicely.
I am not 100% on this, but I think it might help if you tried changing:
context.Response.Redirect(this.Request.Url.LocalPath + "?action=exception");
to
Server.Transfer(this.Request.Url.LocalPath + "?action=exception,false)
My thinking is that the the over-max-request-length Request is still being processed in the Redirect call but if you tell it to ditch the form data, it will become under the max request length and then it might behave differently.
No guarantees, but its easy to check.
catch (Exception ex)
{
if (ex is HttpException && (ex as HttpException).WebEventCode == 3004)
{
//-- you can now inform the client that file uploaded was too large.
}
else
throw;
}
I have a similar issue in that I want to catch the 'Maximum request length exceeded' exception within the Application_Error handler and then do a Redirect.
(The difference is that I am writing a REST service with ASP.Net Web API and instead of redirecting to an error page, I wanted to redirect to an Error controller which would then return the appropriate response).
However, what I found was that when running the application through the ASP.Net Development Server, the Response.Redirect didn't seem to be working. Fiddler would state "ReadResponse() failed: The server did not return a response for this request."
My client (Advanced REST Client for Chrome) would simply show "0 NO RESPONSE".
If I then ran the application via a local copy of IIS on my development machine then the redirect would work correctly!
I'm not sure i can definitively say that Response.Redirect does not work on the ASP.Net Development Server but it certainly wasn't working in my situation.
So, I recommend trying to run your application through IIS instead of IIS Express or the Development Server and see if you get a different result.
See this link on how to Specify the Web Server for Web Projects in Visual Studio:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178108(v=vs.100).aspx

How to test if web site written in ASP.Net still alive?

I need to write a simple WinForms apps that can be fired to test if a website is still alive and that that website is able to read from a database.
I am using the whole "(HttpWebResponse)myHttpWebRequest.GetResponse()" thing in c# to test whether the site is alive, but I am at a lose for how to get a test page in my website to write something to the "Response" to indicate that it was able to test it's own connectivity to the database.
Here is the sample code for my Winforms side (ripped from the MSDN):
private void CheckUrl()
{
try
{
HttpWebRequest myHttpWebRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create("http://www.google.com");
HttpWebResponse myHttpWebResponse = (HttpWebResponse)myHttpWebRequest.GetResponse();
myHttpWebResponse.Close();
label1.Text = myHttpWebRequest.Address.AbsoluteUri;
}
catch (WebException e)
{
label1.Text = "This program is expected to throw WebException on successful run." +
"\n\nException Message :" + e.Message;
if (e.Status == WebExceptionStatus.ProtocolError)
{
label1.Text = String.Format("Status Code : {0}", ((HttpWebResponse)e.Response).StatusCode);
label2.Text =String.Format("Status Description : {0}", ((HttpWebResponse)e.Response).StatusDescription);
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
label1.Text = e.Message;
}
}
I was hoping for some help on the webform side of things to return to the above code.
Thanks for any help that you folks can provide.
Richard
You can create a webservice inside of the project called IAMALIVE and have it return a single char.
On your WinForms area, consume said WebService and if it works, your site is alive.
In the essence of Papuccino's answer: you can actually create web services that are embedded in the C# code-behind of your WebForms pages by marking them with the [WebMethod] attribute. Those will reside within the web application, not just the server.
What happens when your site fails? Does it return a 500 status code or timeout?
Another way to look at it: does it always do something expected if it succeeds?
You might call a URL in your web app that you know will either return a 200 response code or will have some expected HTML markup in the response if things are working fine.
Have your winform call this URL and examine the Response.status or the text in the output buffer for your expected markup. You should also create a timeout in your httprequest. If the page does not load within the timeout, you will get a web exception and you will know the site is failing.
Also, if you have the budget, there are external monitoring services like gomez.com that can automate this and provide reporting on site availability.
have your webform page open a database connection and perform something simple/low-impact, e.g.
select SystemTableId from dbo.[SystemTable] where SystemTableId = 1
where SystemTable is a single-row table.
If the page throws an exception for any reason, Response.Write the exception message, otherwise Response.Write("SUCCESS") or similar.

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