I have an ASP.NET Web API web service which throws a SerializationException in certain circumstances. The problem is that I'm unable to trap and log this exception server-side -- the only place it shows up is in the body of the HTTP response to the client.
I registered an ExceptionFilterAttribute as described in Exception Handling in ASP.NET Web API and verified that it works properly when I throw an exception within my controller. Unfortunately the SerializationException is being thrown during the response (after the controller) and appears to be completely swallowed up by ASP.NET. I also tried hooking Application_Error() in Global.asax.cs but it didn't show up there either.
How can I catch SerializationException exceptions during the Web API response?
If, instead of returning an object, you use the ApiController.CreateResponse() method and return a HttpResponseMessage you can then do response.Content.LoadIntoBufferAsync().Wait() and that will force the serialization to happen whilst you are still in the action and therefore can catch the exception.
BTW, Serialization of responses actually happens at the host layers(in HttpControllerHandler, when hosted in IIS and in HttpSelfhostServer, when hosted in SelfHost) which is way below the stack and not immediately after the response is returned from an action.
WebAPI Stack Poster: http://www.asp.net/posters/web-api/ASP.NET-Web-API-Poster-grayscale.pdf
That said, I am not able to come up with a straight forward way to achieve this. This is cumbersome, but may be override the default Xml and Json formatter's WriteToStreamAsync methods and try-catch-log any exceptions?
Alternatively, you can enable Web API Tracing which would log the exceptions happening during serialization. But yeah, if you do not know for the requests which cause the serialization errors, then you might want to enable tracing all the time which i am not sure is something you might want to do.
You can catch all Web API exceptions by registering an implementation of IExceptionHandler.
See Web API Global Error Handling
...there are a number of cases that exception filters can’t handle. For example:
Exceptions thrown from controller constructors.
Exceptions thrown from message handlers.
Exceptions thrown during routing.
Exceptions thrown during response content serialization .
One thing not mentioned in that article is that your IExceptionHandler must be registered, either by GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Services.Add(...) or via an IoC container configured to be used by DependencyResolver.
Related
I have a webform that has a single page method. My other web apps log unhandled exceptions to the system event log on the web server. Since the other developers that I work with expect to see entries for app errors in the event log, I would like this app to do the same.
However, I have the app send error emails when an exception is caught from calling code inside the page method. It is not writing to the event log when this occurs. Note: the page method re-throws the exception after calling my email notification method.
From what I've read so far it seems that ASP.Net logs errors to the event log by default. I imagine that the same is not true for Page Methods/WebMethods because they basically throw the exception to the client code calling it.
Is there a trivial way to have that exception bubble up properly so that it writes to the event log? No other apps write to the event log directly from what I've seen so I don't think the application could create a new source since our security people keep a lot of things locked down (with good intentions, yay security).
[WebMethod]
public static object MyPseudoWebMethod()
{
try
{
// My exception spawning unreliable code here
}
catch(Exception ex)
{
// Cleanup ...
this.SendErrorNotification(ex);
throw; // <-- This doesn't bubble up but I'd love for it to!
}
}
Hmm interesting problem. You are right in that WebMethod exceptions do NOT follow normal exception flow.
The Application_Error event is not fired if your web method throws an
exception. The reason for this is that the HTTP handler for XML Web
services consumes any exception that occurs while an XML Web service
is executing and turns it into a SOAP fault prior to the
Application_Error event is called.
(from here)
The above page suggests using a SOAP extension to catch that exception before its swallowed, but here's how I'd do it if you don't want to do that:
1) Make a new 'error recieving' ASPX page that you will build that will take whatever params you want to record in your error log. So for example, have this page take in a POST named "ExceptionDetails" or whatever else you wish to capture. This page will NOT be viewed directly in a browser, so it doesnt need any ASPX controls or anything, but using a MasterPage on it won't hurt anything.
2) In the code behind of this new page, grab whatever POSTS you are sending in and new-up an Exception with whatever details you need. Immediate throw this exception. Doing this means that this exception will follow whatever flow other unhandled exceptions follow in the app (logging, emailing, etc).
3) On the page that calls the WebMethod JS, Wrap the calls to the WebMethod in a try-catch
4) In the catch block, print out whatever message you want in the browser, and initiate a new AJAX post to that new error receiving ASPX page, passing along whatever POST stuff you made that page look for.
The new AJAX call will NOT change ANYTHING in the user's perception by default. The AJAX call fires off a new request to that page, and the ASPX page itself is actually totally unaware that its AJAX and not a normal browser request. Any cookies/session/authentication data that's currently set are available to the AJAXed page as well, if you are recording a user's ID or anything. If you look at the returned response from a tool like Firebug, you will see that its actually the YellowScreenOfDeath's HTML (unless you have a custom 500 page, in which case its that HTML that comes back).
This is simply how the legacy ASMX web services work.
The only workaround is to stop using them (which you should do anyway, unless you're stuck with .NET 2.0). WCF doesn't have this problem.
How do I get current parameter values when an exception occurs inside a random method without having specific code in each method to write out the values?
I need this for ASP.NET MVC and WCF IErrorHandler?
For example given the following code:
public void SomeRandomMethod(Request request, string someRandomString)
{
throw new Exception();
}
is there a way for an IErrorHandler in WCF or MVC global.asax HttpApplication's Application_Error & Elmah to get the value of the Request object and someRandomString without specifically catching the exception and writing custom logic for each of N number of methods then throwing again?
Maybe this should be broken into 2 questions one for WCF and one for ASP>NET MVC?
The request hierarchies seem very similar to me and so I was hoping for a single unified answer.
I would recommend using Elmah. It's a wonderful logging tool for ASP.NET applications. It will include the parameters passed along with the HTTP request.
I am using .net framework 4.0, plain asp.net and working with webform. Currently I having a base class to handle all parameter passing and redirect. I wonder is it possible to write a base class to handle nullRefeerenceException from all pages in once, lets say redirect end user to somewhere or display particular error message.
Scenario: For example, some pages must come along with parameter, if no parameter captured, I would like to redirect them to somewhere.
You can try to control the ProcessRequest. You need to test it to see if can do the work you ask for, but this is a good point to capture all errors of your page.
public override void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context)
{
try
{
base.ProcessRequest(context);
}
catch (Exception x)
{
// handle here your error from the page...
}
}
Some more notes
I was use this code on one critical page, but I do not use it for all my page. Even tho can capture the errors, some times you can not do nothing else here other than throw again the final error, so end up that is better to log your unknown and unhandled errors from globa.asax Application_Error, and on page make sure that you use try/catch to handle them where they happens.
After some think maybe is not good practice to use it. Good practice is to use try/catch in the place that you may have throws and not a general one like that.
Last
You also get throw error here when the user close the connection before the end of the render, but if you log the errors you get the same on Application_Error - this is not a page error.
Exception of type 'System.Web.HttpUnhandledException' was thrown. --->
System.Web.HttpException: The remote host closed the connection.
The error code is 0x80072746.
In you Global.asax, handle Application_Error.
When a NullReferenceException is handled by the server a 500 response is created. Redirect all of your server 500 messages however you want. This guide will help.
Definitive Guide to Handling 500 Errors in IIS6, IIS7, ASP.NET MVC3 with Custom Page
You can hook up to every uncatched NullReference Exception, depending on what you want to do.
For instance you can use the global.asax, to be specific the Application_Error Event. You can get a reference to the exception, look for the type and perform a redirect there.
Another way to get ahold of exceptions would be to write your custom error provider, but that wouldn't give you the possibility to perform a redirect.
I'm using the common practice of catching errors in global.asax in my ASP.net application. In global.asax, I have a function Application_Error that logs the errors to the database.
This works very well to log errors that occur when the user requests a page.
However, this does nothing to help when an asynchronous method (a method decorated with the [WebMethod] attribute) called from the client-side throws an exception. The exception simply bubbles up and may be returned to the client-side code, but I would like to have the error handling code run on the server automatically similar to how page errors are logged in global.asax.
How do I accomplish this? One way would be to wrap every single asynchronous method with try-catch, but this doesn't seem like a good solution to me.
One option is to create an ASP.NET output filter that intercepts and logs WebMethod exceptions sent by ASP.NET to the client. Here's the basic idea:
Create a subclass of Stream that captures the content of the response.
When the stream is closed, check whether the response has a 500 status code as well as a "jsonerror: true" header. If so, the response contains a WebMethod exception; log the exception.
In Global.Application_PostMapRequestHandler, install an instance of this class as the output filter for JSON requests.
For complete source code, see this StackOverflow answer.
How to create a global exception handler for a Web Service
I am using ASP.Net 2.0. I found myself in an awkward situtation because I could not find the cause of an error. Up until now I have been using this idiom when it comes to accessing data.
try
{
access data
}
catch (SqlException exception)
{
Response.redirect("error.aspx");
}
finally
{
Dispose of connections, commands etc
}
Now I can never see what the actual error was because it is always handled. Sometimes I can run SQL Profiler and catch the last statement and run that in SQL Query Analyzer and see if there is a problem. That is obviously terrible.
So I thought that the global.asax Application_Error method would save me and I would email myself the exception. But this method seems to only be called for unhandled exceptions. So my question is, is rather better to not handle the exception at all, the system sends the email and use a customError page. Or is it better to ram the exception into the session, redirect to the error.aspx and try and do something with the error then. Is there a way to call Application_Error again? Because if I throw the exception again at the error.aspx then I get the yellow screen of death?
In my opinion, use a library (log4net for example) to log your exceptions and throw the exception again, let the asp.net redirect the error page to a custom page with web.config customErrors section.
Log4Net or Enterprise Library's Exception Handling Application Block both have email sending features.
Also take a look at ELMAH, very smart and pluggable exception handling module.
Logging would be invaluable here. In your catch blocks, log the error out to a log file. its a good idea to get in the habit of doing this at it can be a real life saver to see whats going on. Have a look at nlog which is a logging library. There are various tools out there too that allow you to analyse logs produced by nlog
Since you are using ASP.NET 2.0, your best bet is to do nothing.
ASP.NET added a feature called ASP.NET Health Monitoring. By default, this will log detailed exception information to the Application event log. It can be configured to send different kinds of problem to different destinations.
So, simply do nothing, and everything will be fine.
You can simply log the exception somewhere before redirecting to the Error page.
Something like :
try
{
//access data
}
catch (SqlException exception)
{
LogException(exception);
Response.redirect("error.aspx");
}
finally
{
//Dispose of connections, commands etc
}
Thus you can have it both ways, Customer will be directed to error page and still your exception is logged somewhere for you to review and get to the bottom of it.
By the way, there are many free logging libraries that you can use notably log4net and Enterprise library