How to get rid of that HTML error report in ASP.NET MVC ?

Question

All I need would be just the error message in plain text. But ASP.NET is doing some HTML report output from every error.

I have a jquery ajax call and when an error is thrown I'm getting all that crap over to the client side.

I've created a filter attribute but didn't helped.

public class ClientErrorHandler : FilterAttribute, IExceptionFilter
{
    public void OnException(ExceptionContext filterContext)
    {
        var responce = filterContext.RequestContext.HttpContext.Response;
        responce.Write(filterContext.Exception.Message);
        responce.ContentType = MediaTypeNames.Text.Plain;
        filterContext.ExceptionHandled = true;
    }
}

EDIT

I'm seeing this

and I'd like to see just what is in here filterContext.Exception.Message

Answer 1

you need to return a ContentResult

ContentResult result = new ContentResult();
result.Content = filterContext.Exception.Message;
result.ContentType = MediaTypeNames.Text.Plain; 
filterContext.Result = result;
filterContext.ExceptionHandled = true; 

Answer 2

It looks to me like the reason why you cannot correctly handle the exception is because it happens outside of the MVC pipeline. If you look at the stack trace in the code you posted there is no reference to System.Web.Mvc code (the firing of exception filters when an exception occurs is called from ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeAction).

The stack trace indicates that the exception happens late in the ASP.NET pipeline (OnEndRequest) and that it's coming through the Autofac component.

To capture this error you would have to subscribe to the HttpApplication's Error event. See the following article on creating a global error handler: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/994a1482.aspx . In this event you can handle the error and redirect to a custom error page.

Answer 3

Since you're using JQuery and WCF (by the details of your error), you might want to take a look at this article on how to handle service faults elegantly between jQuery and WCF - you might have to rework your service if you are able to do so.