I created an ASP.NET Core 5 Web App for “API” (similar to MVC) with the OpenAPI (aka Swagger) option turned on.

To note: I have nearly 2 decades experience with .NET but this is my first real-world dive into .NET Core/5, so I’m skipping the whole “learning from first principals” and figuring it out as I go off the back of what I already know.
In this case I’m setting up a new project to move some part of an existing ASP.NET 4.6 MVC app into it.

It was all working fine until I wanted to add an OnActionExecuting() override to the Controller, from the IActionFilter interface.
Once I added the interface and the 2 required method the calls to the actual controller, calling the endpoints worked fine. But F5 debug runs of the project, which loaded the https://localhost:xxxxx/swagger/index.html page, would produce the error:

Failed to load API definition.

Errors

Fetch errorundefined /swagger/v1/swagger.json

 

Which in typical 3rd party framework fashion is fucking useless for consuming and gives use no useful information to work with.

So off to StackOverflow I go.

After a search for OnActionExecuting Fetch errorundefined /swagger/v1/swagger.json I came across this page: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48450262/asp-net-core-swashbuckle-not-creating-swagger-json-file, specifically the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/53632914/115704 which mentioned [NoAction]. Things then clicked for me.

The [NoAction] attribute on the 2 interface methods didn’t work for me, but after a bit more searching I found [NonAction] and which solved the problem.

Then I was back up and working with Swagger again.

 

 

Screenshots

Code before the fix

(Noting the [NonAction] is not impmented)

 

The error from Swagger

Honestly, how fucking useless is this an an error? About as good as the classic “an unexpected error occurred” (to which I always exclaim: “no shit, Sherlock!” Like any developer actually expects an error).

 

Code after the Fix

[NonAction] attributes have been implemented.

 

Swagger after the fix

And look, Swagger works again.

 

At the end of the day this was a couple of hours of my night lost.

Partly my fault for implementing a new version of .NET without doing the obligatory 40 hours of training. Also partly Swaggers fault because, well, it pissed me off for not giving a more detailed error message, especially in a development environment.