ASP.NET Core equivalent of ASP.NET MVC 5's HttpException

Question

In ASP.NET MVC 5 you could throw a HttpException with a HTTP code and this would set the response like so:

throw new HttpException((int)HttpStatusCode.BadRequest, "Bad Request.");

HttpException does not exist in ASP.NET Core. What is the equivalent code?

Answer 1

I implemented my own HttpException and supporting middleware which catches all HttpException's and turns them into the corresponding error response. A short extract can be seen below:

You can use the Boilerplate.AspNetCore Nuget package or you can view the full source code on the following ASP.NET MVC Boilerplate GitHub project, or create a new project using the ASP.NET MVC Boilerplate project template which lets you optionally turn on this feature when creating a new project (just check the box, to turn it on).

// Usage example in Startup.cs
public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder application)
{
    application.UseIISPlatformHandler();

    application.UseStatusCodePagesWithReExecute("/error/{0}");
    application.UseHttpException();

    application.UseMvc();
}

public static class ApplicationBuilderExtensions
{
    public static IApplicationBuilder UseHttpException(this IApplicationBuilder application)
    {
        return application.UseMiddleware<HttpExceptionMiddleware>();
    }
}

internal class HttpExceptionMiddleware
{
    private readonly RequestDelegate next;

    public HttpExceptionMiddleware(RequestDelegate next)
    {
        this.next = next;
    }

    public async Task Invoke(HttpContext context)
    {
        try
        {
            await this.next.Invoke(context);
        }
        catch (HttpException httpException)
        {
            context.Response.StatusCode = httpException.StatusCode;
            var responseFeature = context.Features.Get<IHttpResponseFeature>();
            responseFeature.ReasonPhrase = httpException.Message;
        }
    }
}

public class HttpException : Exception
{
    private readonly int httpStatusCode;

    public HttpException(int httpStatusCode)
    {
        this.httpStatusCode = httpStatusCode;
    }

    public HttpException(HttpStatusCode httpStatusCode)
    {
        this.httpStatusCode = (int)httpStatusCode;
    }

    public HttpException(int httpStatusCode, string message) : base(message)
    {
        this.httpStatusCode = httpStatusCode;
    }

    public HttpException(HttpStatusCode httpStatusCode, string message) : base(message)
    {
        this.httpStatusCode = (int)httpStatusCode;
    }

    public HttpException(int httpStatusCode, string message, Exception inner) : base(message, inner)
    {
        this.httpStatusCode = httpStatusCode;
    }

    public HttpException(HttpStatusCode httpStatusCode, string message, Exception inner) : base(message, inner)
    {
        this.httpStatusCode = (int)httpStatusCode;
    }

    public int StatusCode { get { return this.httpStatusCode; } }
}

Answer 2

After a brief chat with @davidfowl, it seems that ASP.NET 5 has no such notion of HttpException or HttpResponseException that "magically" turn to response messages.

What you can do, is hook into the ASP.NET 5 pipeline via MiddleWare, and create one that handles the exceptions for you.

Here is an example from the source code of their error handler middleware which will set the response status code to 500 in case of an exception further up the pipeline:

public class ErrorHandlerMiddleware
{
    private readonly RequestDelegate _next;
    private readonly ErrorHandlerOptions _options;
    private readonly ILogger _logger;

    public ErrorHandlerMiddleware(RequestDelegate next, 
                                  ILoggerFactory loggerFactory,
                                  ErrorHandlerOptions options)
    {
        _next = next;
        _options = options;
        _logger = loggerFactory.CreateLogger<ErrorHandlerMiddleware>();
        if (_options.ErrorHandler == null)
        {
            _options.ErrorHandler = _next;
        }
    }

    public async Task Invoke(HttpContext context)
    {
        try
        {
            await _next(context);
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            _logger.LogError("An unhandled exception has occurred: " + ex.Message, ex);

            if (context.Response.HasStarted)
            {
                _logger.LogWarning("The response has already started, 
                                    the error handler will not be executed.");
                throw;
            }

            PathString originalPath = context.Request.Path;
            if (_options.ErrorHandlingPath.HasValue)
            {
                context.Request.Path = _options.ErrorHandlingPath;
            }
            try
            {
                var errorHandlerFeature = new ErrorHandlerFeature()
                {
                    Error = ex,
                };
                context.SetFeature<IErrorHandlerFeature>(errorHandlerFeature);
                context.Response.StatusCode = 500;
                context.Response.Headers.Clear();

                await _options.ErrorHandler(context);
                return;
            }
            catch (Exception ex2)
            {
                _logger.LogError("An exception was thrown attempting
                                  to execute the error handler.", ex2);
            }
            finally
            {
                context.Request.Path = originalPath;
            }

            throw; // Re-throw the original if we couldn't handle it
        }
    }
}

And you need to register it with StartUp.cs:

public class Startup
{
    public void Configure(IApplicationBuilder app, 
                          IHostingEnvironment env, 
                          ILoggerFactory loggerfactory)
    {
       app.UseMiddleWare<ExceptionHandlerMiddleware>();
    }
}

Answer 3

Alternatively, if you just want to return an arbitrary status code and aren't concerned with the Exception-based approach, you can use

return new HttpStatusCodeResult(400);

Update: as of .NET Core RC 2, the Http prefix is dropped. It is now:

return new StatusCodeResult(400);

Answer 4

The Microsoft.AspNet.Mvc.Controller base class exposes a HttpBadRequest(string) overload which takes an error message to return to the client. So from within a controller action, you could call:

return HttpBadRequest("Bad Request.");

Ultimately my nose says any private methods called from within a controller action should either be fully http-context-aware and return an IActionResult, or perform some other small task completely isolated from the fact that it's inside of an http pipeline. Granted this is my personal opinion, but a class that performs some piece of business logic should not be returning HTTP status codes, and instead should be throwing its own exceptions which can be caught and translated at the controller/action level.