Error Handling in ASP.NET MVC Applications

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This article takes a look at the basics of MVC Design
Pattern, discusses ASP.NET MVC
Framework and shows how we can implement error handling in ASP.NET MVC
applications.

Before we begin delving deep into the details of ASP.NET MVC
concepts and error handling using ASP.NET framework, let’s take a quick tour of
the Model View
Controller Design Pattern.

What is Model View Controller Design Pattern?

The basic objective of the Model View
Controller Design Pattern is separation of concerns. This is composed of three
major components: namely, Model, View, and Controller. The Model represents the
domain objects or the application’s data. Scott
Guthrie states: "Models in a MVC based application are the components
of the application that are responsible for maintaining state."

The View is responsible for rendering the
application’s data from the model to the presentation layer. Scott Guthrie
states: “Views in a MVC based application are the components responsible for
displaying the application’s user interface.”

The Controller integrates all these components.
According to Scott Guthrie: "Controllers in a MVC based application are
the components responsible for handling end user interaction, manipulating the
model, and ultimately choosing a view to render to display UI. In a MVC
application the view is only about displaying information – it is the
controller that handles and responds to user input and interaction."

Reference: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/14/asp-net-mvc-framework.aspx

What is ASP.NET MVC Framework?

The ASP.NET MVC Framework is based on the proven time tested
Model View Controller (MVC) Design Pattern and provides you a platform for
designing and implementing web applications where you can have a cleaner
separation of concerns, better code organization, seamless extensibility,
scalability and code reuse. Applications designed using the ASP.NET MVC Framework
are easier to test and maintain. The Model View Controller Design Pattern
comprises mainly of three components: the model to store the data and business
components of the application, the view to present data to the user and the
controller to integrate all the components nicely.

Scott Guthrie states in his blog: "One of the benefits
of using an MVC methodology is that it helps enforce a clean separation of
concerns between the models, views and controllers within an application.
Maintaining a clean separation of concerns makes the testing of applications
much easier, since the contract between different application components are
more clearly defined and articulated."

Reference:
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/14/aspnet-mvc-framework.aspx.

Goals of the ASP.NET MVC Framework

The ASP.NET MVC Framework provides support
for the following:

• Test Driven Design model
• IOC containers and Dependency Injection
• Clean URLs and Navigation
• Pluggable, Extensible, and Maintainable applications
• Existing ASP.NET features

Error Handling in ASP.NET MVC Applications

The HandleError attribute in ASP.NET MVC processes
exceptions thrown by the MVC infrastructure. Here is an example given below.

In the application’s web.config specify the following:

<customErrors mode="On">
    <error statusCode="401" redirect="/Errors/Http401" />
</customErrors>

namespace Sample.Controllers
{
    [HandleError]
    public class HomeController : Controller
    {
        public ActionResult Index()
        {
            // Force a 401 exception
            throw new HttpException(401, "Unauthorized");
        }
    }
}

In this section we will implement a simple ASP.NET Error
Handler. The first step is to configure the web.config file appropriately as
shown below:

<customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="/Error/HttpError">
  <error statusCode="404" redirect="/Error/Http404" />
</customErrors>

In the Application_Error method of the Global.asax you can
catch the exception as shown below:

protected void Application_Error(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   Exception exectionObject = Server.GetLastError();
   Application[HttpContext.Current.Request.UserHostAddress.ToString()] = exectionObject;
} 

The next step is
implementing the Error Controller. Here is how it looks:

public class ErrorController : Controller
  {
   public ActionResult HttpError()
   {
       Exception exectionObject = null;
         try
       {
           exectionObject = (Exception)HttpContext.Application[Request.UserHostAddress.ToString()];
       }
       catch
       {
       }

       if (exectionObject  != null)
          ViewData["Message"] = ex.Message;

       else
          ViewData["Message"] = "An error occurred.";
          return View("Error");
   }

   public ActionResult Http404()
   {
       ViewData["Message"] = "The requested page is not available.";
       return View("Error");
   }
  }

The next and the last page is to implement the Error web
page. I leave it to the readers to get that done.

References

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee707344(v=vs.91).aspx

WCF RIA Services e-Book Author: Brian Noyes

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee354381.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WCF/wcffileserver.aspx

Summary

Scott Guthrie states in his blog: One of
the benefits of using a MVC methodology is that it helps enforce a clean
separation of concerns between the models, views and controllers within an
application. Maintaining a clean separation of concerns makes the testing of
applications much easier, since the contract between different application
components are more clearly defined and articulated.

Reference: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/14/asp-net-mvc-framework.aspx

In this article we have had a look at the basics of ASP.NET
MVC and how we can handle errors in ASP.NET applications. Happy reading!