404 Http error handler in Asp.Net MVC (RC 5)

Question

How can I Handler 404 errors without the framework throwing an Exception 500 error code?

Answer 1

http://jason.whitehorn.ws/2008/06/17/Friendly-404-Errors-In-ASPNET-MVC.aspx gives the following explanation:

Add a wildcard routing rule as your final rule:

routes.MapRoute("Error", 
 "{*url}", 
 new { controller = "Error", action = "Http404" });

Any request that doesn't match another rule gets routed to the Http404 action of the Error controller, which you also need to configure:

public ActionResult Http404(string url) {
 Response.StatusCode = 404;
 ViewData["url"] = url;
 return View();
}

• Jason Whitehorn: Just an FYI, The above linked post is returning a 404 (oh the irony). The new address is: jason.whitehorn.ws/2008/06/17/…
• BC.: The only problem here is that so much matches the typical /{controller}/{action}/{id} route. To get around the problem, I explicitly defined all my routes and got rid of it.
• stej: Unfortunatelly the link doesn't work. Even jason.whitehorn.ws is not accessible :|
• UpTheCreek: This is fine for situations where routes don't match, but doesn't help when an id is not valid for example...
• Bryan Denny: @JasonWhitehorn 404 again

Answer 2

You can also override HandleUnknownAction within your controller in the cases where a request does match a controller, but doesn't match an action. The default implementation does raise a 404 error.

• Matt Kocaj: Good idea. Check out this solution which incorporates a HandleUnknownAction override: stackoverflow.com/questions/619895/…

Answer 3

throw new HttpException(404, "Resource Not Found");

Answer 4

With MVC 3 you can return HttpNotFound() to properly return a 404.

Like this:

public ActionResult Download(string fontName)
{
 FontCache.InitalizeFonts();
 fontName = HttpUtility.UrlDecode(fontName);
 var font = FontCache.GetFontByName(fontName);
 if (font == null)
 return HttpNotFound();
 return View(font);
}