Brock Allen has a nice blog post on how to return 401 for ajax calls when using Cookie authentication and OWIN.
http://brockallen.com/2013/10/27/using-cookie-authentication-middleware-with-web-api-and-401-response-codes/
Put this in ConfigureAuth method in the Startup.Auth.cs file:
app.UseCookieAuthentication(new CookieAuthenticationOptions
{
AuthenticationType = DefaultAuthenticationTypes.ApplicationCookie,
LoginPath = new PathString("/Account/Login"),
Provider = new CookieAuthenticationProvider
{
OnApplyRedirect = ctx =>
{
if (!IsAjaxRequest(ctx.Request))
{
ctx.Response.Redirect(ctx.RedirectUri);
}
}
}
});
private static bool IsAjaxRequest(IOwinRequest request)
{
IReadableStringCollection query = request.Query;
if ((query != null) && (query["X-Requested-With"] == "XMLHttpRequest"))
{
return true;
}
IHeaderDictionary headers = request.Headers;
return ((headers != null) && (headers["X-Requested-With"] == "XMLHttpRequest"));
}