Proper Handling of 404 Errors Using redirectMode

Using Custom Error Pages

The problem is that ASP.NET doesn't change the status code to 404 when a page cannot be found. For example, with the configuration section shown earlier, a request for a non-existing page like DoesNotExist.aspx generates the following response in Fiddler:

Figure 1

Although the page DoesNotExist.aspx does not exist, the browser (or search agent) doesn't receive a 404 error code, but a 302 error code which tells it to look elsewhere for the requested page. The browser happily accepts the instructions and then requests the page /Errors/Error404.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/DoesNotExist.aspx. This in turn returns a http 200 code (OK) so as far as the browser or search agent are concerned, everything is OK and DoesNotExist.aspx has simply moved.

To overcome this problem you can set the 404 status code in the Page's Load event of the Error404.aspx page like this:

protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  Response.Status = "404 Not Found";
  Response.StatusCode = 404;
}

When you now request DoesNotExist.aspx again, Fiddler tells you this:

Figure 2

This is hardly any better; the original request still generates a 302 redirect request that the browser or agent happily accepts. However, now the page that is being redirected to results in a 404 error. Not really the result you're after....

Before ASP.NET SP1 one of the solutions to this problem was to intercept the http 404 exception in the Global.asax file and then manually execute the Error404 page by reassigning the current handler using System.Web.UI.PageParser.GetCompiledPageInstance, like this:

protected void Application_Error(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
  HttpApplication application = (HttpApplication)sender;
  Exception lastError = application.Server.GetLastError();
  HttpException ex = lastError as HttpException;
  string fourOhFourPage = "~/Errors/Error404.aspx";
  // Only response to 404 errors
  if (ex != null && ex.GetHttpCode() == 404)
  {
    // Clear the error in order to avoid standard handling of the error.
    application.Server.ClearError();
    application.Context.Handler = 
          System.Web.UI.PageParser.GetCompiledPageInstance(fourOhFourPage, 
          application.Server.MapPath(fourOhFourPage), application.Context);
  } 
}

Now when you request DoesNotExist.aspx you should see this:

Figure 3

Nice. But it requires quite a bit of work, and it no longer uses the <customErrors /> section, instead hard coding the Erorr404.aspx page in the Global.asax file.

With ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 Microsoft introduced a new attribute on the <customErrors /> section for the web.config file called redirectMode. Its default value is ResponseRedirect which results in the same behavior as before. However, the setting ResponseRewrite results in the Error404.aspx page being executed and sent to the output using a rewrite, rather than a redirect. This means the address bar in the browser stays the same, and the requested page (which wasn't found) nicely results in a 404 error. With the custom code removed from the Global.asax file, and the web.config modified to read like below, requesting a non-existent page now results in the exact same behavior as shown in Figure 3: a nice 404 error code directly on the page a user requested.

<customErrors mode="On" defaultRedirect="~/Errors/Error.aspx"  
       redirectMode="ResponseRewrite">
  <error statusCode="404" redirect="~/Errors/Error404.aspx" />
  <error statusCode="500" redirect="~/Errors/Error500.aspx" />
</customErrors>