Asp.net-mvc – Intermittent asp.net mvc exception: “A public action method ABC could not be found on controller XYZ.”

asp.net-mvcexception

I'm getting an intermittent exception saying that asp.net mvc can’t find the action method. Here’s the exception:

A public action method 'Fill' could
not be found on controller
'Schoon.Form.Web.Controllers.ChrisController'.

I think I have the routing set up correctly because this application works most of the time. Here is the controller’s action method.

[ActionName("Fill")]
[AcceptVerbs(HttpVerbs.Get | HttpVerbs.Post), UserIdFilter, DTOFilter]
public ActionResult Fill(int userId, int subscriberId, DisplayMode? mode)
{
     //…
}

The route:

routes.MapRoute(
        "SchoonForm",
        "Form/Fill/{subscriberId}",
        new { controller = "ChrisController", action = "Fill" },
        new { subscriberId = @"\d+" }
    );

And here is the stack:

System.Web.HttpException: A public
action method 'Fill' could not be
found on controller
'Schoon.Form.Web.Controllers.ChrisController'.
at
System.Web.Mvc.Controller.HandleUnknownAction(String
actionName) in
C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\Controller.cs:line
197 at
System.Web.Mvc.Controller.ExecuteCore()
in
C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\Controller.cs:line
164 at
System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.Execute(RequestContext
requestContext) in
C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\ControllerBase.cs:line
76 at
System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.System.Web.Mvc.IController.Execute(RequestContext
requestContext) in
C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\ControllerBase.cs:line
87 at
System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContextBase
httpContext) in
C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\MvcHandler.cs:line
80 at
System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext
httpContext) in
C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\MvcHandler.cs:line
68 at
System.Web.Mvc.MvcHandler.System.Web.IHttpHandler.ProcessRequest(HttpContext
httpContext) in
C:\dev\ThirdParty\MvcDev\src\SystemWebMvc\Mvc\MvcHandler.cs:line
104 at
System.Web.HttpApplication.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute()
at
System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep
step, Boolean& completedSynchronously)

Here is an example of my filters they all work the same way:

public class UserIdFilter : ActionFilterAttribute
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
    {
        const string Key = "userId";

        if (filterContext.ActionParameters.ContainsKey(Key))
        {
            filterContext.ActionParameters[Key] = // get the user id from session or cookie
        }

        base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
    }
}

Thanks,
Chris

Best Answer

We found the answer. We looked into our web logs. It showed that we were receiving some weird http actions (verbs/methods) like OPTIONS, PROPFIND and HEAD.

This seems to the cause of some of theses exceptions. This explains why it was intermittent.

We reproduced the issue with the curl.exe tool:

curl.exe -X OPTIONS http://localhost/v2.3.1.0/(S(boztz1aquhzurevtjwllzr45))/Form/Fill/273
curl.exe -X PROPFIND http://localhost/v2.3.1.0/(S(boztz1aquhzurevtjwllzr45))/Form/Fill/273
curl.exe -X HEAD http://localhost/v2.3.1.0/(S(boztz1aquhzurevtjwllzr45))/Form/Fill/273

The fix we used was to add an authorization section to web.config:

<authorization>
  <deny users="*" verbs="OPTIONS, PROPFIND, HEAD"/>
</authorization>