ASP.NET MVC user friendly 401 error

Question

I have implemented errors handling in ASP.NET MVC site in a way like suggests this post.

With 404 errors all works fine. But how correctly show user friendly screen

Answer 1

Look at the HandleErrorAttribute. Subclass from it or add your own implementation which will handle all the status codes you're interested in. You can make it to return a separate error view for each error type.

Here is an idea of how to create your handle error exception filter. I've thrown out most of the stuff to only focus on our essentials. Absolutely have a look at the original implementation to add arguments checks and other important things.

public class HandleManyErrorsAttribute : FilterAttribute, IExceptionFilter
{
    public virtual void OnException(ExceptionContext filterContext)
    {
        if (filterContext.ExceptionHandled || !filterContext.HttpContext.IsCustomErrorEnabled)
            return;

        Exception exception = filterContext.Exception;

        string viewName = string.Empty;
        object viewModel = null;
        int httpCode = new HttpException(null, exception).GetHttpCode();
        if (httpCode == 500)
        {
            viewName = "Error500View";
            viewModel = new Error500Model();
        }
        else if (httpCode == 404)
        {
            viewName = "Error404View";
            viewModel = new Error404Model();
        }
        else if (httpCode == 401)
        {
            viewName = "Error401View";
            viewModel = new Error401Model();
        }

        string controllerName = (string)filterContext.RouteData.Values["controller"];
        string actionName = (string)filterContext.RouteData.Values["action"];
        filterContext.Result = new ViewResult
        {
            ViewName = viewName,
            MasterName = Master,
            ViewData = viewModel,
            TempData = filterContext.Controller.TempData
        };
        filterContext.ExceptionHandled = true;
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.Clear();
        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.StatusCode = httpCode;

        filterContext.HttpContext.Response.TrySkipIisCustomErrors = true;
    }
}

Then you "decorate" your controller actions with this attribute:

[HandleManyErrors]
public ActionResult DoSomethingBuggy ()
{
    // ...
}