ASP.NET MVC: What is the correct way to redirect to pages/actions in MVC?

Question

I am fairly new to MVC but not sure exactly which Redirect... replaces the standard redirect used in WebForms ie the standard Response.Redirect()

For instance, I need to redirect to other pages in a couple of scenarios:

1) WHen the user logs out (Forms signout in Action) I want to redirect to a login page.

2) In a Controller or base Controller event eg Initialize, I want to redirect to another page (AbsoluteRootUrl + Controller + Action)

It seems that multiple redirects get called in some cases which causes errors, something to do with the fact a page is already being redirected? How can cancel the current request and just redirect?

Update:

The answer to this question (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1679405/system-web-mvc-controller-initialize) indicates that Initialize should not be used and OnActionExecuting should be used?

Any comments on why Initialize should not be used or why OnAuthorization is not a better option?

More Info:

This blog post (http://blog.wekeroad.com/blog/aspnet-mvc-securing-your-controller-actions/) indicates that OnActionExecuting is useful for authentication (as indicated in the link above) I guess adding this to that event in the base Controller class is fine as every page runs an Action in MVC so shouldnt make much difference and having the ability to redirect should be easier. This does make sense, but it also seems to make sense to me that things could be done in an event before this event and makes we question what those events are for? Will be giving OnActionExecuting a go..

Answer 1

RedirectToAction("actionName", "controllerName");

It has other overloads as well, please check up!

Also, If you are new and you are not using T4MVC, then I would recommend you to use it!

It gives you intellisence for actions,Controllers,views etc (no more magic strings)

Answer 2

1) To redirect to the login page / from the login page, don't use the Redirect() methods. Use FormsAuthentication.RedirectToLoginPage() and FormsAuthentication.RedirectFromLoginPage() !

2) You should just use RedirectToAction("action", "controller") in regular scenarios.. You want to redirect in side the Initialize method? Why? I don't see why would you ever want to do this, and in most cases you should review your approach imo.. If you want to do this for authentication this is DEFINITELY the wrong way (with very little chances foe an exception) Use the [Authorize] attribute on your controller or method instead :)

UPD: if you have some security checks in the Initialise method, and the user doesn't have access to this method, you can do a couple of things: a)

Response.StatusCode = 403;
Response.End();

This will send the user back to the login page. If you want to send him to a custom location, you can do something like this (cautios: pseudocode)

Response.Redirect(Url.Action("action", "controller"));

No need to specify the full url. This should be enough. If you completely insist on the full url:

Response.Redirect(new Uri(Request.Url, Url.Action("action", "controller")).ToString());

Answer 3

1) WHen the user logs out (Forms signout in Action) I want to redirect to a login page.

public ActionResult Logout() {
    //log out the user
    return RedirectToAction("Login");
}

2) In a Controller or base Controller event eg Initialze, I want to redirect to another page (AbsoluteRootUrl + Controller + Action)

Why would you want to redirect from a controller init?

the routing engine automatically handles requests that come in, if you mean you want to redirect from the index action on a controller simply do:

public ActionResult Index() {
    return RedirectToAction("whateverAction", "whateverController");
}