Get current stack trace in Java

Question

Something like Environment.StackTrace in .Net.

BTW, Thread.dumpStack() is not what I want - I want to get the stacktrace back, not print it out.

Answer 1

You can use Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()

That returns an array of StackTraceElements that represent the current stack trace of a program.

Answer 2

Silly me, it's Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace();

Answer 3

try {
}
catch(Exception e) {
    StackTraceElement[] traceElements = e.getStackTrace();
    //...
}

or

Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace()

Answer 4

To get the stack trace of all threads you can either use the jstack utility, JConsole or send a kill -quit signal (on a Posix operating system).

However, if you want to do this programmatically you could try using ThreadMXBean:

ThreadMXBean bean = ManagementFactory.getThreadMXBean();
ThreadInfo[] infos = dumpAllThreads(true, true);

for (ThreadInfo info : infos) {
  StackTraceElement[] elems = info.getStackTrace();
  // Print out elements, etc.
}

As mentioned, if you only want the stack trace of the current thread it's a lot easier - Just use Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace();

Answer 5

Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace();

is fine if you don't care what the first element of the stack is.

new Throwable().getStackTrace();

will have a defined position for your current method, if that matters.

Answer 6

Thread.currentThread().getStackTrace();

is available since JDK1.5.

For an older version, you can redirect exception.printStackTrace() to a StringWriter() :

StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
new Throwable("").printStackTrace(new PrintWriter(sw));
String stackTrace = sw.toString();