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How to catch all exceptions in Web API 2?

Anonymous User 2534 14 Jan 2015

I'm writing a RESTful API in Web API and I'm not sure how to handle errors effectively. I want the API to return JSON, and it needs to consist of the exact same format every single time - even on errors. Here are a couple of examples of what a successful and a failed response might look like.

Success:
{
    Status: 0,
    Message: "Success",
    Data: {...}
}
Error:
{
    Status: 1,
    Message: "An
error occurred!",
    Data: null
}

If there is an exception - any exception at all, I want to return a response that is formed like the second one. What is the foolproof way to do this, so that no exceptions are left unhandled?

1 Answers

Manoj Bhatt 14 Jan 2015

Implement IExceptionHandler.

Something like:

public class APIErrorHandler : IExceptionHandler
{
    public Task HandleAsync(ExceptionHandlerContext
context, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        var jsonResult= Json.Encode(new 
                                {
                                    Message = new{ Message = context.Exception.Message }, 
                                    Status = ...
// whatever,
                                    Data = ... //
whatever
                                });
 
        context.Result= new ResponseMessageResult(new HttpResponseMessage { StatusCode = HttpStatusCode.InternalServerError,
Content = new StringContent(jsonResult) });
 
        return Task.FromResult(0);
    }
}

and in the configuration section of WebAPI (public static void Register(HttpConfiguration config)) write:

config.Services.Replace(typeof(IExceptionHandler), new APIErrorHandler());

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