Catching “Maximum request length exceeded”

There is no easy way to catch such exception unfortunately. What I do is either override the OnError method at the page level or the Application_Error in global.asax, then check if it was a Max Request failure and, if so, transfer to an error page.

protected override void OnError(EventArgs e) .....


private void Application_Error(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (GlobalHelper.IsMaxRequestExceededException(this.Server.GetLastError()))
    {
        this.Server.ClearError();
        this.Server.Transfer("~/error/UploadTooLarge.aspx");
    }
}

It’s a hack but the code below works for me

const int TimedOutExceptionCode = -2147467259;
public static bool IsMaxRequestExceededException(Exception e)
{
    // unhandled errors = caught at global.ascx level
    // http exception = caught at page level

    Exception main;
    var unhandled = e as HttpUnhandledException;

    if (unhandled != null && unhandled.ErrorCode == TimedOutExceptionCode)
    {
        main = unhandled.InnerException;
    }
    else
    {
        main = e;
    }


    var http = main as HttpException;

    if (http != null && http.ErrorCode == TimedOutExceptionCode)
    {
        // hack: no real method of identifying if the error is max request exceeded as 
        // it is treated as a timeout exception
        if (http.StackTrace.Contains("GetEntireRawContent"))
        {
            // MAX REQUEST HAS BEEN EXCEEDED
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}