Question

i have ErrorPage.jsp in which i have

<h:messages styleClass="messageError" id="messages1"></h:messages>

when an Exception occurs in a backing beans constructor i catch it and i do the following

public constructorxxx throws Exception{
    // code 
// code 
// code
catch(Exception e){
try{
        LOG.error(e);
        String customMessage = "An Unknown Error At " + e.getStackTrace()[0].toString() +  "at" + message;

        getFacesContext().addMessage(null, new FacesMessage(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_ERROR, 
                customMessage, null));
throw new Exception();
                }catch (IOException exception){   
            LOG.error(exception);   
    } 
}
} // end of constructor

in my Web.xml i used the following tag.

<error-page>
<exception-type>java.lang.Exception</exception-type>
<location>/ErrorPage.jsp</location>    

when i do that i get the following errors

1) Uncaught service() exception root cause Faces Servlet: javax.servlet.ServletException
2) An exception was thrown by one of the service methods of the servlet [/sc00/ErrorPage.jsp] in application [MembershipEligibilityScreensEAR]. Exception created : [java.lang.RuntimeException: FacesContext not found.

and in my page it displays as
SRVE0260E: The server cannot use the error page specified for your application to handle the Original Exception printed below.

Error Message: javax.servlet.ServletException
Error Code: 500
Target Servlet: Faces Servlet
Error Stack: 
java.lang.Exception 
// stack trace


Error Message: java.lang.RuntimeException: FacesContext not found
Error Code: 0
Target Servlet: 
Error Stack: 
java.lang.RuntimeException: FacesContext not found 

Many people asked me to change the location of the ErrorPage.jsp as /sc00/ErrorPage.faces but it shows a broken link warning on my web.xml and the error is webpage cannot be displayed and programming error.

I am using jsf 1.2 and my “ErrorPage.jsp” doesn’t have a backing bean.

can anyone suggest me why the the Error.jsp is not being displayed?

Answer 1

Faces messages are request scoped, so they have the same lifetime as the current HTTP request-response cycle. However, you’re instructing the webbrowser to create a new HTTP request by sending a redirect. The faces messages are not there anymore in the new HTTP request.

You’d better just throw an exception and associate the particular error page with the particular exception by <error-page> entry in web.xml. The servletcontainer will automatically forward to the particular error page within the same request.

E.g.

getFacesContext().addMessage(null, new FacesMessage(FacesMessage.SEVERITY_ERROR, customMessage, null));
throw new SomeException();

with

<error-page>
    <exception-type>com.example.SomeException</exception-type>
    <location>/sc00/ErrorPage.faces</location>
</error-page>

But given that your particular container and JSF impl/version apparently can’t forward to a JSF based error page (is it running in an infinite loop?), then your best bet is to remove all JSF components from the error page (otherwise you will get RuntimeException: FacesContext not found) and make it a really plain vanilla JSP page with only HTML and JSTL.

<error-page>
    <exception-type>com.example.SomeException</exception-type>
    <location>/sc00/ErrorPage.jsp</location>
</error-page>

You should only put the message in the exception itself instead of adding as faces message.

throw new SomeException(customMessage);

Then, you can display it in the error page as follows:

${requestScope['javax.servlet.error.message']}

You could even just let the exception go (i.e. just redeclare it as throws in action method.

public void doSomething() throws SomeException {
    // ...
}

The servletcontainer will automatically log it anyway.