Handling 500 errors in sitecore multi site multi language environment [duplicate]

Question

I found a similar question, but could not find out what I need from there

I am trying to achieve a language-specific, content manageable, friendly error message page for 500 status code.

What I have done so far is:

• Added a new processor in httpRequestEnd pipeline after Sitecore.Pipelines.HttpRequest.EndDiagnostics
• Finding if there is any internal server error.

• If there is, getting error Item from sitecore.

  public class Handle500Erros : HttpRequestProcessor
  {
  public override void Process(HttpRequestArgs args)
  {
  
      if (args?.Context?.Response.StatusCode == (int)HttpStatusCode.InternalServerError)
      {
          var errorPageItem =
          Sitecore.Context.Database.GetItem(string.Concat(Sitecore.Context.Site.StartPath, Settings.ErrorPage));
          if (errorPageItem!= null && Sitecore.Context.Item.ID!= errorPageItem.ID)
          {
              Sitecore.Context.Item = errorPageItem;
              //var htmlForErrorPageForSpecificlanguage = GetHtmlforErrorItem
              // set response html to htmlForErrorPageForSpecificlanguage
          }
      }
  }
  }
  

Let's assume my error Item name in sitecore is 500Error

Now my question is:

• How to get Html for the error sitecore Item?
• How to write that to response, seems like args.Context.Response is readonly?

So if some error comes up at 500Error item I am just skipping this step, so there won't be any infinite loops happening.

Am I over complicating? is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

You want to use a static html page for this as otherwise you could end up in an endless loop.

You can do this in your web.config like so:

<customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" xdt:Transform="Replace">
   <error redirect="/error.html" statusCode="500" />
</customErrors>

You can then add a rewrite rule for each site to actually load a different static page for each site from a folder in your solution like so:

  <rule name="Server Error Rule" stopProcessing="true" enabled="true">
      <match url=".*" />
      <conditions>
        <add input="{URL}" pattern="^/error.html$" />
        <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^(admin|www).(mysite1|mysite2|mysite3)?.*.(com|co.uk)" />
      </conditions>
      <action type="Rewrite" url="/errors/{C:2}.html" />
    </rule>

You will not be able to show info regarding the Sitecore item or other things that caused issues using this approach but I think it is risky to do so in case of Database connectivity issues and so forth. You would instead look at your Sitecore log files to find out what caused the problem.

Answer 2

Adam is on point!

That is the best approach I've found to work with any Sitecore install.

Here is what I ended up doing - with some explanation around it..

Insert the following into your Web.Config

Inside <system.webServer>

<rewrite>
    <rules>
        <rule name="CustomApplicationErrorPage" patternSyntax="ECMAScript">
            <match url="(ApplicationError.htm)" />
            <action type="Rewrite" url="/errors/{C:0}ApplicationError.html" appendQueryString="false" />
            <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAny">
                <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="(google)" />
                <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="(walmart)" />
            </conditions>
        </rule>
    </rules>
</rewrite>

What I am doing is looking for inbound requests to the default error page.

In the case of this client it is ~/ApplicationError.htm

So my rule is to check for that route.. and my conditions look at just the HTTP_HOST (domain name) and I set regex to look for specific domain names

And then I use those to rewrite the inbound traffic to a dynamic custom error pages stored in the /errors/ folder on webroot. using the {C:0} token.

www.google.com | regex (google) => rewrite to /errors/googleApplicationError.html

www.walmart.com | regex (walmart) => rewrite to /errors/walmartApplicationError.html

I hope this helps.