Question

I am using Java 6, jsf 1.2, spring on tomcat and if I do an operation after a timeout from a certain page, I get the exception below.

My question is why doesn’t the page get redirected to my error page /error/error.jsf?

This is the web.xml (I have no filters):

<error-page>
    <exception-type>javax.faces.application.ViewExpiredException</exception-type>
    <location>/error/error.jsf</location>
</error-page>
  <error-page>
    <exception-type>java.lang.IllegalStateException</exception-type>
    <location>/error/error.jsf</location>
</error-page>
 <error-page>
    <exception-type>java.lang.Exception</exception-type>
    <location>/error/error.jsf</location>
</error-page>
<error-page>
    <exception-type>org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException</exception-type>
    <location>/error/error.jsf</location>
</error-page>

This is the error message on my page:

   An Error Occurred:
    Error creating bean with name 'melaketViewHandler' defined in 
ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/JSFViewHandlersContext.xml]: Instantiation 
of bean failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: 
Could not instantiate bean class [com.ewave.meuhedet.view.melaketViewHandlers.MelaketViewHandler]: Constructor threw 
exception; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException

        - Stack Trace

        org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean
     with name 'melaketViewHandler' defined in ServletContext resource 
    [/WEB-INF/JSFViewHandlersContext.xml]: Instantiation of bean failed; nested 
    exception is org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Could not
     instantiate bean class [com.ewave.meuhedet.view.melaketViewHandlers.MelaketViewHandler]:
     Constructor threw exception; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException

      at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.ConstructorResolver.autowireConstructor(ConstructorResolver.java:254) 
...

Answer 1

We’re using a custom view handler that catches the exceptions and redirects to the error page:

public class ExceptionHandlingFaceletViewHandler extends FaceletViewHandler { 
  ...

  protected void handleRenderException( FacesContext context, Exception exception ) throws IOException, ELException, FacesException {  
    try {
      if( context.getViewRoot().getViewId().matches( ".*/error.jsf" ) ) {
        /*
         * This is to protect from infinite redirects if the error page itself is updated in the
         * future and has an error
         */
        LOG.fatal("Redirected back to ourselves, there must be a problem with the error.xhtml page", exception );
        return;
      }

      String contextPath = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getRequestContextPath();
      getHttpResponseObject().sendRedirect( contextPath + "/error" );
    }
    catch( IOException ioe ) {
      LOG.fatal( "Could not process redirect to handle application error", ioe );
    }
  }

  private HttpServletResponse getHttpResponseObject() {
    return (HttpServletResponse)FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getExternalContext().getResponse();
  }
}