Access Denied with RunWithElevatedPrivileges

A strange situation happened to me few days ago, when checking a portion of SharePoint 2013 server-side code on a custom form. Basically, it uses RunWithElevatedPrivileges to check that the current user has access to a certain site and certain libraries, before uploading the file to a content organizer enabled library.

The Symptoms

The code that runs with elevated privileges on a POST event triggered "Access Denied" errors when trying to access SPWeb and SPList objects. The objects were declared under the elevated privilege code block but the ULS logs still show the "access denied" errors.

The Cause

According to MSDN blog the code running with elevated permissions has to validate the form digest before entering the elevated permissions code block. If not, it might give "Access Denied" errors.

The Solution

Just add SPUtility.ValidateFormDigest(); before the elevated permissions block and the "Access Denied" errors dissappear.