HOW TO Handle request from non browser application with an ASP.NET application

Dear all,
How to make sure that my ASP.NET application accept requests from non browser ( e.g. a test http request from a perl script).

Today my application is working fine with a web browser, but I receive an HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error when I test http request from a perl script.

Thank you

 

My site is working fine with a browser, but I soon as I test the site with simulator of web search engine (like http://www.spider-simulator.com/or http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/servercheck.cgi) it doesn't work.... you can try by yourself: www.rentalps.com

If you have an idea of what is causing the error it would be great ...

Thanks

 

Hi Bruce,

I will try to be more specific:

1. My web site is working fine

2. But,I am not able to reference my site with search engine

3. To understand why I am not able to reference my site with search engine, I found some tools on the Internet that are acting as web search engine robot (like http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/servercheck.cgi) in order to see what they see

4. I found out that that what they see is the following:




Server Response: http://www.rentalps.com/

Status: HTTP/1.1 500 Internal Server Error

Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2005 21:16:48 GMT

Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

MicrosoftOfficeWebServer: 5.0_Pub

X-Powered-By: ASP.NET

X-AspNet-Version: 1.1.4322

Cache-Control: private

Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8

Content-Length: 3528

5. Obviously this is why they can not reference me

6. However my site is working fine

7. Conclusion: I do not know what to do .... or where to look at

It would be nice to see if other ASP.NET site hosted in the same server are having the same error. Then it would mean that IIS might be rejecting non browser request ...

Thank you again for your kind help ... I am kind of lost

Julien

 

Ok, I understand now.
I'll implement the error handling and try to get the description of the error.

Thank you for your help
Julien

 

I finally find the bug:

Error was in the "Application_BeginRequest" of my global.asax where I am trying to get access the HttpContext of the user browser: "HttpContext.Current.Request.UserLanguages(0)" ... it generated an error with search bot !

Julien

 

Hi Bruce,


I implemented the error catching routine in my web application (using global error trapping with global.asax). I test it and it's working fine.


However, no errorare generated when I am trying to access my website with the tools that are acting as web search engine robot (like http://www.searchengineworld.com/cgi-bin/servercheck.cgi) ... even though they can not read the site


I found another tool that simulate web seach engine robot (http://www.spider-simulator.com/) and if I run this one against my website (www.rentalps.com) I get the following info (but still no error catching):


Server Error in '/' Application. Object reference not set to an instance of an object. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Stack Trace:
[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.] Global.Application_BeginRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e) System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication+IExecutionStep.Execute() +60 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +87
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:1.1.4322.2032; ASP.NET Version:1.1.4322.2063


Any idea?


Thank you


Julien