Execute global filter before controller's OnActionExecuting, in ASP.NET Core

Question

In an ASP.NET Core 2.0 application, I am trying to execute a global filter's OnActionExecuting before executing the Controller's variant. Expected behaviour is that I can prepare something in the global before and pass along the result value to the controller(s). The current behaviour, however, is that the order of execution is reversed by design.

The docs tell me about the default order of execution:

Every controller that inherits from the Controller base class includes OnActionExecuting and OnActionExecuted methods. These methods wrap the filters that run for a given action: OnActionExecuting is called before any of the filters, and OnActionExecuted is called after all of the filters.

Which leads me to interpret that the Controller's OnActionExecuting is executed before any of the filters. Makes sense. But the docs also states that the default order can be overridden by implementing IOrderedFilter.

My attempt to implement this in a filter is like so:

public class FooActionFilter : IActionFilter, IOrderedFilter
{
    // Setting the order to 0, using IOrderedFilter, to attempt executing
    // this filter *before* the BaseController's OnActionExecuting.
    public int Order => 0;

    public void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext context)
    {
        // removed logic for brevity
        var foo = "bar";

        // Pass the extracted value back to the controller
        context.RouteData.Values.Add("foo", foo);
    }
}

This filter is registered at startup as:

services.AddMvc(options => options.Filters.Add(new FooActionFilter()));

Finally, my BaseController looks like the sample below. This best explains what I'm trying to achieve:

public class BaseController : Controller
{
    public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext context)
    {
        // The problem: this gets executed *before* the global filter.
        // I actually want the FooActionFilter to prepare this value for me.
        var foo = context.RouteData.Values.GetValueOrDefault("foo").ToString();
    }
}

Setting the Order to 0, or even a non-zero value like -1, does not seem to have any effect on the order of execution.

My question: what can I do to make my global filter execute the OnActionExecuting before the (Base)Controller's OnActionExecuting?

Based on the documentation I'd say that the Order property can only be used to override the default ordering of filters only and the property does not affect the order of controller methods and filters. — Akos Nagy
– Akos Nagy, Commented Apr 18, 2018 at 20:05

RickAndMSFT · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-23 23:54:39Z

10

You're almost there. Your small mistake is that default order of controller filter execution is not 0. This order is defined in ControllerActionFilter class as int.MinValue (source code):

public class ControllerActionFilter : IAsyncActionFilter, IOrderedFilter
{
    // Controller-filter methods run farthest from the action by default.
    /// <inheritdoc />
    public int Order { get; set; } = int.MinValue;

    // ...
}

So the only change you should make to your current code is to set FooActionFilter.Order to int.MinValue:

public class FooActionFilter : IActionFilter, IOrderedFilter
{
    public int Order => int.MinValue;

    //  ...
}

Now FooActionFilter and ControllerActionFilter have the same order. But FooActionFilter is a global filter, while ControllerActionFilter is Controller-level filter. That's why FooActionFilter will be executed the first, based on this statement:

The Order property trumps scope when determining the order in which filters will run. Filters are sorted first by order, then scope is used to break ties.

edited Dec 23, 2019 at 23:54

RickAndMSFT

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answered Apr 19, 2018 at 5:34

CodeFuller

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2 Comments

Juliën Over a year ago

That's it, @CodeFuller! Thanks a bunch.

Marko Over a year ago

@CodeFuller Is this order property also necessary on async action filters?

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