Runtime exceptions from listeners

Question

          When a servlet context listener throws a runtime exception, does the container
          catch it? It seems that
          the container just ignores the exception and tries to go on with life as usual.
          It does not even log the
          exception trace in the server log. Out of desperation, I finally put my entire
          contextInitialized() method
          in a try-block, and created a catch-block for RuntimeException which prints the
          exception stack-trace to
          the console.
          

Answer 1

          "Daniel Steinberg" <[email protected]> wrote:
          >
          >"Chuck Nelson" <[email protected]> wrote:
          >>
          >>Runtime exceptions can occur anywhere in a program and in a typical
          >program
          >>can
          >>be very numerous. The cost of checking for runtime exceptions often
          >exceeds
          >>the
          >>benefit of catching or specifying them. Thus the compiler does not require
          >>that
          >>you catch or specify runtime exceptions, although you can
          >>
          >>Take a look at the following link on a discussion of runtime exceptions
          >>
          >>http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/exceptions/runtime.html
          >>
          >>Chuck Nelson
          >>Developer Relations Engineer
          >>BEA Technical Support
          >>
          >
          >If a servlet throws a runtime exception, the request fails and
          >exception information is written to the console and to the server
          >log. I would expect similar behavior when a listener throws a
          >runtime exception. A runtime exception generally indicates
          >a precondition violation by the client class (see Bloch,
          >Effective Java, p. 172). So when such an exception ocurrs, the
          >request should die and the developer should be informed of the
          >situation.
          >exception ocurrs, the program should die,
          >
          It seems that I'm not the only one bothered by this behavior
          (which is unspecified in the Servlet 2.3 spec).
          See Bug #4519704 in the JDC Bug Parade.