This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz
by Peter G Provost.
Original Post: Response.End in ASP.NET and HTTP Handlers
Feed Title: Peter Provost's Geek Noise
Feed URL: /error.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/Rss.aspx
Feed Description: Technology news, development articles, Microsoft .NET, and other stuff...
I'm currently sitting through the ASP.NET Exposed Roadshow here in Denver and I just
saw something on the screen that caught my eye.
Rob Howard had an ASPX page that was pulling documents out of a database. After putting
the content out and writing it back to the Response.OutputStream, he called Response.End.
Now this was a nice demo of using File upload into and out of a database, but
like so many MS demos, it could easily mislead novices.
Now I seem to recall someone writing somewhere that Response.End (and Response.Redirect
for that matter) actually do some very nasty things deep down inside of the .NET runtime.
From what I recall, they both cause some pretty nasty stuff to occur deep down inside
of .NET (exceptions... forceably terminated threads... etc.)
The right answer of course, is to use an HTTP Handler (ASHX) file. ASHX files let
you create an HTTP endpoint that can return any content type that you want.
Later on, Ron demoed how to create an image on the fly using ASP.NET. Once again he
used an ASPX file instead of an ASHX file. I understand that introducing ASHX files
to a group of potential newbies is risky, but I'm really getting tired of running
into "experienced" .NET developers who copy the things they see in these demos and
put it in production code.
Previous Topic
