How to wire common code from a base controller in ASP.NET MVC

Question

My ASP.NET MVC application is a small part of a bigger ColdFusion app that is going to be soon replaced completely. I\'m passing some parameters from ColdFusion part through

Answer 1

If this is necessary on every action within a particular controller, one potential option you could probably use is to just do this in the base controller...

public class MyBaseController: Controller
{
    protected override void Initialize(RequestContext requestContext)
    {
        base.Initialize(requestContext);

        var cookie = base.Request.Cookies["coldfusioncookie"];
        //if something is wrong with cookie
            Response.Redirect("http://mycoldfusionapp");
    }
}

Answer 2

If you already implemented a base controller just override its OnActionExecuting() method:

public class YourBaseController : Controller
{
    protected override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);

        if(somethingIsWrong)
        {
            filterContext.Result = new RedirectToRouteResult(
                new System.Web.Routing.RouteValueDictionary { ... });
        }
    }
}

Answer 3

The better approach would be to implement a custom ActionFilterAttribute and override the OnActionExecuting method to handle the logic and then just decorate your actions with the attribute.

public class CheckCookieAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        // Check your cookie and handle the redirect here, otherwise, do nothing
        // You can get to your cookie through the filterContext parameter
    }
}

public class ActionController : Controller
{
    [CheckCookie]
    public ActionResult GetFoo()
    {
        return View();
    }
}

Hope this helps.