NullReferenceException while using Authorize Attribute

Question

I have [Authorize] attribute on the HomeController, whenever I am trying to access it, it throws a NullReferenceException

This is really kind of weird, because I have used [Authorize] many times before and it works just fine. Only difference in this case is this Application is hosted on our own Web Server using Windows 7 & IIS 7.5

Here is Stack Trace:

[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.]
System.Web.Mvc.AuthorizeAttribute.AuthorizeCore(HttpContextBase httpContext) +38
System.Web.Mvc.AuthorizeAttribute.OnAuthorization(AuthorizationContext filterContext) +160
System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeAuthorizationFilters(ControllerContext controllerContext, IList`1 filters, ActionDescriptor actionDescriptor) +155
System.Web.Mvc.ControllerActionInvoker.InvokeAction(ControllerContext controllerContext, String actionName) +784976
System.Web.Mvc.Controller.ExecuteCore() +159
System.Web.Mvc.ControllerBase.Execute(RequestContext requestContext) +335 System.Web.Mvc.<>c_DisplayClassb.b_5() +62
System.Web.Mvc.Async.<>c_DisplayClass1.b_0() +20
System.Web.Mvc.<>c_DisplayClasse.b_d() +54
System.Web.CallHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +453 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +371

Edit:

While looking into code of AuthorizeCore method, it seems that AuthorizeCore is throwing NullReferenceException because it gets a NULL HttpContextBase.

Could it be possible? Because everything else in application is working just fine, like accessing database, creating auth cookie etc.

Edit 2:

This happen only after publishing it to Web Server. While development, it works absolutely fine from Visual Studio.

Answer 1

Issue was even more worse HttpContext was not even available in Controller's and Razor views. So, I reinstall ASP.NET v4.0 using aspnet_regiis -ir. And then used ASP.NET 4.0 pool which was created during registration instead of using DefaultAppPool.

And it started working fine. It also solve my another issue of overriding <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"/> in my application web.config.

Answer 2

In my case I was setting HttpContext.Current.User to null in one of the global.asax application events. When I let the User property unchanged the error disappeared.

Answer 3

You probably need to make sure that the application pool your site is using has Managed Pipeline Mode = Classic.