Comments on: ASP.NET MVC Action Filter – Ajax Only Attribute

By: Martin Karlsson

Martin Karlsson — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:12:49 +0000

Big warning sign: Some hardware firewalls (e.g. Watchguard) have a feature that silently removes all “non-standard” HTTP headers, including the X-Requested-With header which IsAjaxRequest() checks. So if your AJAX requests suddenly start getting 404′s you now know why!

By: andrexx

andrexx — Fri, 29 May 2009 05:54:49 +0000

Such attribute already exist in MvcFutures assembly – AcceptAjaxAttribute,
but throw Exception instead 404 error.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 29 May 2009 02:20:30 +0000

I’m pretty sure we will see such an attribute in a future MVC release, don’t forget we’re still at version 1.0!

By: dervalp

dervalp — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:42:47 +0000

I am wondering, is that a normal behavior to put your action “Ajax only” ? For me yes, cause sometime you want to use function only with ajax and if you’re trying the put the url in the browser, sending a 404 is a normal behavior. But if it’s a normal way, why this function is not integrate in the MVC framework ? Is there someone who knows more about this ?

By: Andrew Gunn

Andrew Gunn — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:26:23 +0000

And obviously, the 401 should be 404. Third time lucky!

By: Andrew Gunn

Andrew Gunn — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:25:44 +0000

I mean:

filterContext.Result = new HttpNotFoundResult();

By: Andrew Gunn

Andrew Gunn — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:25:01 +0000

Good article. Instead of hard-coding the 404 redirect, I’d change the response’s status code and let ASP.NET decide where the user should go:

filterContext.HttpContext.Response.StatusCode = 401;

Alternatively, you could wrap this up in a class that inherits from ActionResult (just like AuthorizeAttribute):

public class HttpNotFoundResult : ActionResult
{
public override void ExecuteResult(ControllerContext context)
{
if (context == null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException(“context”);
}
context.HttpContext.Response.StatusCode = 401;
}
}

…and set the result of the filter context:

filterContext.Result = HttpNotFoundResult;

Hope this helps.

By: Andrew Nurse

Andrew Nurse — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:00:31 +0000

Cool stuff. Maybe you could convert it from an Action Filter to an Action Selector though, similar to the AcceptVerbs attribute. Then, a non ajax result to that method will act like a request to a non-existant action.

(See System.Web.Mvc.ActionMethodSelectorAttribute)