Sitecore 9 : Error in controller rendering throws Error rendering controller:the current route url is: '{*pathinfo}'. this is the default sitecore route which is set up in the 'initializeroutes' processor of the 'initialize' pipeline sitecore 9

Hello Guyz,
Believe me but I just had the nightmarish situation where I got trapped in this controller rendering issue where it kept on giving me below error

Error rendering controller: the current route url is: '{*pathinfo}'. this is the default Sitecore route which is set up in the 'initializeroutes' processor of the 'initialize' pipeline 

There mainly two reasons for this exception

• Controller rendering you have used is having either wrong namespace, wrong controller name or wrong assembly name.
• There is something wrong with System.Web.Mvc.dll

you should first observe your controller rendering configuration, see if namespace or controller name or assembly name are correctly given? this is common issue when we copy and paste the path and it could contain spaces or aeesmbly name could be wrong, if everything looks good there, read further

I tried everything like changing the name of controller, deleting the physical controller and creating It with different name, deleting renderings from sitecore and try creating them again, deleting global.asax file deleting sitecore cache, but I was ending in the same error all the time, and finally one fine moment I was out side my home one small thing clicked me and I run back to my laptop and tried implementing it and it worked !! Phew !!! which is following .

Solution

Well, When I created my visual studio project it added the System.Web.Mvc.dll by default and it was added with the version 5.2.4.0 which is fine but the issue was that sitecore installation was using the version 5.2.3.0

Now because my general practice is that I delete my projects web.config file and also web..config files from the view, and copy it from sitecore's installation, now my solution had config from sitecore which were pointing to 5.2.3.0 DLL and my solution had 5.2.4.0, which could never work and end up in assembly manifest error, if i deploy, as i did not copied it to BIN that error was not there but somehow solution was using 5.2.4.0 when sitecore requested that page or controller/action path, and due to it the route was not working

A small change i did,

• Deleted the any old reference from bin folder of my IIS site
• Copied sitecore's System.Web.Mvc.dll and added it as a reference to my project so i downgraded my project from 5.2.4.0 to 5.2.3.0
• Deleted web.config and copied it from sitecore's instance

And it worked now sitecore is able to find the route and hitting the MVC controller, Phew !!!

Try above tips if you get trapped in similar situation