ASP.NET Core MVC Interview Question #186

How would you handle an external API failure from an MVC action?

Senior Practical MVC Scenarios & Production Architecture Senior Advanced

Quick Interview Answer

Keep HTTP integration logic in a dedicated service rather than the controller. Configure HttpClient through IHttpClientFactory and apply suitable timeouts and resilience policies according to the operation.

Detailed Explanation

The controller should receive a meaningful application result and decide how to present it. Do not expose raw upstream exception details to users, and do not retry non-idempotent operations blindly.

Code Example

public async Task<IActionResult> ShippingQuote(
    int orderId,
    CancellationToken token)
{
    var result = await _shipping.GetQuoteAsync(orderId, token);

    if (!result.Succeeded)
        return View("ServiceUnavailable");

    return View(result.Value);
}