Eaten exceptions starting with JDeveloper 10.1.3.1

Question

In the thread Bug(?): Exceptions ignored in ControllerClass I described a bug in ADFPhaseListener that ate exceptions. Starting with 10.1.3.1, this bug remains and there is a new bug - exceptions are eaten in com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.phase() method as well. And it has even worse side effect - it prevents executing of subsequent phase listeners after the exception occurs, so the workaround defined in the other thread does not work. This even breaks JSF specification, which specifies, that container must ensure, that if beforePhase method is executed, corresponding afterPhase must be called.
To catch all Throwables and just output it if tracing is enabled, is quite nasty, especially in frameworks... Bug remains in 10.1.3.2 (the jsf-impl.jar is identical).
The only workaround is not to throw exceptions (ugh...). I have a base class for all ControllerClass-es, that catches Throwables and the handler forwards to errorpage and calls responseComplete():
public class BasePagePhaseListener implements PagePhaseListener {
  public final void beforePhase(PagePhaseEvent event) {
    try {
      // internal method
      beforePhaseInt(event);
    } catch (RuntimeException e) {
      handleError(e);
    } catch (Error e) {
      handleError(e);
  /** Method to override in subclasses */
  public void beforePhaseInt(PagePhaseEvent event) { }
  // afterPhase similarly...
  private void handleError(Throwable e) {
    FacesContext fctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
    fctx.responseComplete();
    ExternalContext ec = fctx.getExternalContext();
    RequestDispatcher rd = ((HttpSession)ec.getSession(true)).getServletContext()
      .getRequestDispatcher("/errorpage.jsp");
    ServletRequest request = (ServletRequest)ec.getRequest();
    request.setAttribute("javax.servlet.jsp.jspException", e);
    try {
      rd.forward(request, (ServletResponse)ec.getResponse());
    } catch (Exception e2) {
      e2.printStackTrace();
}I'm going to create a SR :(
Viliam
P.S.: never do catch (Throwable e) { }, if you really don't have to, please...

Answer 1

hi Viliam Durina
You are right about the issue in ADFPhaseListener and its different PhaseInvoker implementations.
Some of its PhaseInvoker.after() method implementations have empty catch blocks while catching Exception (for this JDeveloper itself warns "Catch block for java.lang.Exception should rethrow or invoke handler.").
See lines 329 and 414 in
<jdevstudio10132>\adfc\src\adf-controllersrc.zip!\oracle\adf\controller\faces\lifecycle\ADFPhaseListener.java
It looks like you have been dealing with this for a while? Has Oracle already explained this as intented behaviour or has a bug been logged?
Could you please explain why this "even breaks JSF specification, which specifies, that container must ensure, that if beforePhase method is executed, corresponding afterPhase must be called."?
The oracle.adf.controller.v2.lifecycle.PagePhaseListener is not part of that specification, is it?
regards
Jan Vervecken