Intermittent asp.net mvc exception: “A public action method ABC could not be found on controller XYZ.”

user_212407 0
Viewed 49177

I'm getting an intermittent exception saying that asp.net mvc can’t find the action method. Here’s the exception:

A public action method 'Fill' could not be found on controller 'Schoon.Form.Web.Controllers.ChrisController'.

I think I have the routing set up correctly because this application works most of the time. Here is the controller’s action method.

[ActionName("Fill")]
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get | HttpVerbs.Post), UserIdFilter, DTOFilter]
public ActionResult Fill(int userId, int subscriberId, DisplayMode? mode)
{
     //…
}

The route:

routes.MapRoute(
        "SchoonForm",
        "Form/Fill/{subscriberId}",
        new { controller = "ChrisController", action = "Fill" },
        new { subscriberId = @"\d+" }
    );

And here is the stack:

System.Web.HttpException: A public action method 'Fill' could not be found on controller 'Schoon.Form.Web.Controllers.ChrisController'. at System.Web.Mvc.Controller.HandleUnknownAction(String actionName) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\Controller.cs:line 197 at System.Web.Mvc.Controller.ExecuteCore() in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\Controller.cs:line 164 at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\ControllerBase.cs:line 76 at System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.System.Web.Mvc.IController.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\ControllerBase.cs:line 87 at System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContextBase httpContext) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\MvcHandler.cs:line 80 at System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext httpContext) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\MvcHandler.cs:line 68 at System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.System.Web.IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext httpContext) in C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\MvcHandler.cs:line 104 at System.Web.HttpApplication.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() at System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)

Here is an example of my filters they all work the same way:

public class UserIdFilter : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        const string Key = "userId";

        if (filterContext.ActionParameters.ContainsKey(Key))
        {
            filterContext.ActionParameters[Key] = // get the user id from session or cookie
        }

        base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
    }
}

Thanks, Chris

asp.net-mvc exception
13 Answers

We found the answer. We looked into our web logs. It showed that we were receiving some weird http actions (verbs/methods) like OPTIONS, PROPFIND and HEAD.

This seems to the cause of some of theses exceptions. This explains why it was intermittent.

We reproduced the issue with the curl.exe tool:

curl.exe -X OPTIONS http://localhost/v2.3.1.0/(S(boztz1aquhzurevtjwllzr45))/Form/Fill/273
curl.exe -X PROPFIND http://localhost/v2.3.1.0/(S(boztz1aquhzurevtjwllzr45))/Form/Fill/273
curl.exe -X HEAD http://localhost/v2.3.1.0/(S(boztz1aquhzurevtjwllzr45))/Form/Fill/273

The fix we used was to add an authorization section to web.config:

<authorization>
  <deny users="*" verbs="OPTIONS, PROPFIND, HEAD"/>
</authorization>
user_2124070

See if simply browsing to the URL in question is enough to reproduce the error. It would if the action was only defined as a POST action. Doing this allows you to reproduce the error at will.

In any case, you can globally handle the error as below. Another answer here that references HandleUnknownAction only handles URLs with bad action names, not bad controller names. The following approach handles both.

Add this to your base controller (view code omitted here):

public ActionResult Error(string errorMessage)
{
    return View("Error");  // or do something like log the error, etc.
}

Add a global exception handler to Global.asax.cs that calls the method above or does whatever else you want to do with the caught 404 error:

void Application_Error(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    Exception ex = Server.GetLastError();  // get the exception object
    HttpException httpException = ex as HttpException;

    if (httpException != null && httpException.GetHttpCode() == 404)  // if action not found
    {
        string errorMessage = "The requested page was not found.";

        RouteData routeData = new RouteData();
        routeData.Values.Add("controller", "Base");
        routeData.Values.Add("action", "Error");
        routeData.Values.Add("errorMessage", errorMessage);

        Server.ClearError();
        Response.TrySkipIisCustomErrors = true;

        // Go to our custom error view.
        IController errorController = new BaseController();
        errorController.Execute(new RequestContext(new HttpContextWrapper(Context), routeData));
    }
}
user_16673510
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