How to make custom error pages work in ASP.NET MVC 4

Question

I want a custom error page shown for 500, 404 and 403. Here's what I have done:

1. Enabled custom errors in the web.config as follows:

   <customErrors mode="On" 
                 defaultRedirect="~/Views/Shared/Error.cshtml">
   
       <error statusCode="403" 
              redirect="~/Views/Shared/UnauthorizedAccess.cshtml" />
   
       <error statusCode="404" 
              redirect="~/Views/Shared/FileNotFound.cshtml" />
   
   </customErrors>
   

2. Registered HandleErrorAttribute as a global action filter in the FilterConfig class as follows:

   public static void RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilterCollection filters)
   {
       filters.Add(new CustomHandleErrorAttribute());
       filters.Add(new AuthorizeAttribute());
   }
   

3. Created a custom error page for each of the above messages. The default one for 500 was already available out of the box.

4. Declared in each custom error page view that the model for the page is System.Web.Mvc.HandleErrorInfo

For 500, it shows the custom error page. For others, it doesn't.

Is there something I am missing?

It does look like this is not all there is to displaying custom errors as I read through the code in the OnException method of the HandleErrorAttribute class and it is handling only 500.

What do I have to do to handle other errors?

Answer 1

My current setup (on MVC3, but I think it still applies) relies on having an ErrorController, so I use:

<system.web>
    <customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="~/Error">
      <error redirect="~/Error/NotFound" statusCode="404" />
    </customErrors>
</system.web>

And the controller contains the following:

public class ErrorController : Controller
{
    public ViewResult Index()
    {
        return View("Error");
    }
    public ViewResult NotFound()
    {
        Response.StatusCode = 404;  //you may want to set this to 200
        return View("NotFound");
    }
}

And the views just the way you implement them. I tend to add a bit of logic though, to show the stack trace and error information if the application is in debug mode. So Error.cshtml looks something like this:

@model System.Web.Mvc.HandleErrorInfo
@{
    Layout = "_Layout.cshtml";
    ViewBag.Title = "Error";
}
<div class="list-header clearfix">
    <span>Error</span>
</div>
<div class="list-sfs-holder">
    <div class="alert alert-error">
        An unexpected error has occurred. Please contact the system administrator.
    </div>
    @if (Model != null && HttpContext.Current.IsDebuggingEnabled)
    {
        <div>
            <p>
                <b>Exception:</b> @Model.Exception.Message<br />
                <b>Controller:</b> @Model.ControllerName<br />
                <b>Action:</b> @Model.ActionName
            </p>
            <div style="overflow:scroll">
                <pre>
                    @Model.Exception.StackTrace
                </pre>
            </div>
        </div>
    }
</div>