Question

I have the following code:

import org.apache.commons.lang.exception.ExceptionUtils;
public void myMethod() {
    try {
        // do something
    } catch (Exception e) {
        System.out.println(ExceptionUtils.getStackTrace(e)); // prints "java.lang.NullPointerException"
        System.out.println(ExceptionUtils.getFullStackTrace(e)); // prints "java.lang.NullPointerException"
        e.printStackTrace(); // prints "java.lang.NullPointerException"
    }
}

The output that I would like to see is a full stacktrace with line numbers and the hierarchy of classes that failed. For example,

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NullPointerException
        at org.Test.myMethod(Test.java:674)
        at org.TestRunner.anotherMethod(TestRunner.java:505)
        at java.util.ArrayList(ArrayList.java:405)

This code is being run inside a larger app which also has log4j, but I’m hoping to be able to get the exception into a string so I can send it as an email to the java developers.

Does anyone have any ideas about how I can capture the full stack trace to a string? I can’t use Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace() since this app runs on Java 4. What might be blocking the above code from printing the full stacktrace?

Answer 1

The exception might be caught and thrown somewhere before your catch block. Maybe in another class which your are calling to do the logic.

An Exception created like
new Exception(new Throwable("java.lang.NullPointerException"));
will print something like what you see.