How to get MVC action to return 404

asp.net-mvc error-handling http-status-code-404
Paul Hiles picture Paul Hiles · Jun 1, 2010 · Viewed 97.3k times · Source

I have an action that takes in a string that is used to retrieve some data. If this string results in no data being returned (maybe because it has been deleted), I want to return a 404 and display an error page.

I currently just use return a special view that display a friendly error message specific to this action saying that the item was not found. This works fine, but would ideally like to return a 404 status code so search engines know that this content no longer exists and can remove it from the search results.

What is the best way to go about this?

Is it as simple as setting Response.StatusCode = 404?

Answer

Stefan Paul Noack picture Stefan Paul Noack · Feb 1, 2012

In ASP.NET MVC 3 and above you can return a HttpNotFoundResult from the controller.

return new HttpNotFoundResult("optional description");

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