Thursday
Mar152007
Internal NullReferenceException in HttpWebRequest when using a CachePolicy
Thursday, March 15, 2007 at 1:02AM
Setting the CachePolicy to the default HttpRequestCacheLevel causes an exception internal to HttpWebRequest when a web application is running with an application pool configured to use a custom identity. For example:
GetResponse () throws a WebException: “The request was aborted: The request was canceled.” Inner exception shows that the private method CheckCacheUpdateOnResponse () of System.Net.HttpWebRequest encounters a NullReferenceException.
A “workaround” would involve loading the user’s profile. For example, if the application pool custom identity is DOMAIN\MyWebApp, log in to the server as MyWebApp. The error goes away – until the profile is unloaded.
This problem does not occur when the web application is using the default application pool identity, NetworkService, because I believe that profile is already loaded by default.
Another bug report is somewhat similar to this but only manifests after a few thousand requests. These are probably symptoms of a much larger bug (or design flaw – http request caching is currently implemented through IE’s cache).
Update: Microsoft has reproduced this bug and will be addressing it in a future release.
HttpWebRequest request = …;
request.CachePolicy =
new System.Net.Cache.HttpRequestCachePolicy (
System.Net.Cache.HttpRequestCacheLevel.Default);
request.GetResponse ();
GetResponse () throws a WebException: “The request was aborted: The request was canceled.” Inner exception shows that the private method CheckCacheUpdateOnResponse () of System.Net.HttpWebRequest encounters a NullReferenceException.
A “workaround” would involve loading the user’s profile. For example, if the application pool custom identity is DOMAIN\MyWebApp, log in to the server as MyWebApp. The error goes away – until the profile is unloaded.
This problem does not occur when the web application is using the default application pool identity, NetworkService, because I believe that profile is already loaded by default.
Another bug report is somewhat similar to this but only manifests after a few thousand requests. These are probably symptoms of a much larger bug (or design flaw – http request caching is currently implemented through IE’s cache).
Update: Microsoft has reproduced this bug and will be addressing it in a future release.
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