Conditionally disable ASP.NET MVC Controller

Question

What is the best way to disable ASP.NET MVC controller conditionally?

I want to have an access to the controller actions if some value in web.config is "true" and 404 if it's "false"

Should I write my own attribute?

UPDATE: Looking for more elegant solution than action filter attribute (with an ability to pass not constant parameter to attribute constructor)

    [AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Class, AllowMultiple = true, Inherited = true)]
    public class CloseForSomeSettingAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
    {
        public override void OnActionExecuting(ActionExecutingContext filterContext)
        {
            bool mySettingValue = MySettingManager.GetMySettingValue();

            if (mySettingValue)
            {
                filterContext.Result = new HttpStatusCodeResult(404);
            }
            else
            {
                base.OnActionExecuting(filterContext);
            }
        }
    }

Answer 1

Cross posting from: https://stackoverflow.com/a/43044667/257470

My solution for disabling ApiController controller:

• Uses WebConfig AppSettings config flag instead of (#if DEBUG)
• Before method is invoked ExecuteAsync intercepts the invocation and checks feature toggle (feature flag);
• if feature is disabled, returns HTTP 410 GONE
• If it's common for many controllers, move the code to controller's base class

The code:

public class TestController : ApiController
{
    public override Task<HttpResponseMessage> ExecuteAsync(HttpControllerContext controllerContext, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
    {
        var featureFlag = Convert.ToBoolean(System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["EnableTest"]);

        if (featureFlag == false)
        {
            return Task.FromResult(new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Gone));
        }

        return base.ExecuteAsync(controllerContext, cancellationToken);
    }

Answer 2

The easiest would probably be to implement a custom action filter:

http://www.asp.net/mvc/tutorials/older-versions/controllers-and-routing/understanding-action-filters-cs

You can also conditionally add a route that matches that controller that would result in a 404 being returned.