Base classes of controller is ASP.NET MVC have number of methods for initialization before your code runs in an action. Lets review them.
- First of all about constructor. You can't do a lot in it because most of properties aren't initialized yet and you will get NullReferenceException if try to use them.
- Execute is inherited from IController interface and manages all other initialization methods. Usually you have to avoid override it.
- Initialize sets ControllerContext. You should to override it if you need to set culture so on.
- ExecuteCore is called to process request and responsible for loading TempData.
- If I want to predefine some information (grab data from Session and so on) You should use OnActionExecuting. This methods is called just before executing your action method.
- And finally you should use OnActionExecuted for any finalization after executing your code.
PS: During preparing for this post I've used ILSpy. It is excellent free substitute for .NET Reflector (it is payment tool now).
