MVC2 Handling Exceptions from RenderAction

Question

My controller is decorated with [HandleError] and [HandleError(ExceptionType=typeof(CustomException), View="CustomView")]. I have views that consist of multiple partial views from multiple controllers, so we're displaying our partial views using <% RenderAction(...) %> but now we have a case where our action being rendered is throwing a CustomException. I overrode OnException inside HandleErrorAttribute which gets called (twice for some reason) with the CustomException, and then two more times with System.Web.HttpUnhandledException, before being redirected to the default Error.aspx page instead of to CustomView where it should go with this error.

Also, if I remove [HandleError] but keep [HandleError(ExceptionType=typeof(CustomException), View="CustomView")] the HandleErrorAttribute.OnException override never fires.

How do I throw CustomException types from an action that renders a partial view, and still have the app redirect to my CustomView?

Answer 1

I'm not sure why the exception is so deep, but I got it to work adding this code into OnException inside HandleErrorAttribute

if (filterContext.Exception.InnerException != null &&
            filterContext.Exception.InnerException.InnerException != null &&
            filterContext.Exception.InnerException.InnerException.InnerException != null &&
            filterContext.Exception.InnerException.InnerException.InnerException.GetType() == typeof(CustomException))
        {
            filterContext.Exception = filterContext.Exception.InnerException.InnerException.InnerException;
            View = "CustomView";
        }