How to make a catch all error page if something explodes in my MVC3 application?

Question

Currently, I have my web.config file setup to not show debug information. When an error fires, and something goes wrong, this page is displayed to my users:

Sorry, an error occurred while processing your request.

It's the default error page.

How can I redirect to a custom View if things go awry anywhere at any time in my site?

@SergioTapia: Do you really want it to go to this page if *anything* goes wrong on your site? What about Actions where you are returning JSON or XML or something *not* HTML? — casperOne, Nov 14 '11 at 15:29
@casperOne: For this case, everything leading to this page is 'good enough'. — Only Bolivian Here, Nov 14 '11 at 15:31
Check [this](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13905164/how-to-make-custom-error-pages-work-in-asp-net-mvc-4) answer, it works for MVC 3 and 4. — Cacho Santa, May 27 '14 at 20:35

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 14 '11 at 16:07

Error handling can be messy. While editing the default error pages helps, there are some details you should be aware of.

Essentially, there are two types of errors: an error in your managed code which you can somehow 'catch' using code. Second, there are IIS errors that never make it to your managed code, because the associated handler was never invoked. For example, a request that does not map any routes won't invoke any code, because IIS assumes a static resource was requested.

I suggest these three steps to make error handling a bit more convenient

Don't redirect! redirecting on error violates HTTP. Instead, you should simply return the page in-place using Server.Transfer or return View("..."), or by writing to the response stream directly, depending on where the error is handled. Key point: the URL should not change. See, for example http://www.google.com/asdf/asdf
Add and register a global filter that inherits HandleErrorAttribute and implement your error-handling (and logging) routine. You can make this smart so it returns HTML for HTML requests and JSON for JSON requests, etc.
Configure Remove the default error handlers of IIS to make sure all errors go to the same destination, if this is what you want. This prevents you from the ugly IIS default error pages. You can do that in IIS manager, or in web.config.

How to make a catch all error page if something explodes in my MVC3 application?

1 Answers1