Blank Page in JSF

Question

Hello there! If my code throws an exception, sometimes - not everytime - the jsf presents a blank page. I´m using facelets for layout. A similar error were reported at this Sun forumn´s post, but without answers. Anyone else with the same problem, or have a solution? ;)

Due to some requests. Here follow more datails:

web.xml

 <error-page>
        <exception-type>com.company.ApplicationResourceException</exception-type>
        <location>/error.faces</location>
 </error-page>

And the stack related to jsf is printed after the real exception:

####<Sep 23, 2008 5:42:55 PM GMT-03:00> <Error> <HTTP> <comp141> <AdminServer> <[ACTIVE] ExecuteThread: '3' for queue: 'weblogic.kernel.Default (self-tuning)'> <<WLS Kernel>> <> <> <1222202575662> <BEA-101107> <[weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext@6d46b9 - appName: 'ControlPanelEAR', name: 'ControlPanelWeb', context-path: '/Web'] Problem occurred while serving the error page.
javax.servlet.ServletException: viewId:/error.xhtml - View /error.xhtml could not be restored.
    at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:249)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper$ServletServiceAction.run(StubSecurityHelper.java:226)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper.invokeServlet(StubSecurityHelper.java:124)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:283)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.execute(ServletStubImpl.java:175)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.RequestDispatcherImpl.invokeServlet(RequestDispatcherImpl.java:525)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.RequestDispatcherImpl.forward(RequestDispatcherImpl.java:261)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.ForwardAction.run(ForwardAction.java:22)
    at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:321)
    at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(Unknown Source)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.ErrorManager.handleException(ErrorManager.java:144)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.handleThrowableFromInvocation(WebAppServletContext.java:2201)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.execute(WebAppServletContext.java:2053)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletRequestImpl.run(ServletRequestImpl.java:1366)
    at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:200)
    at weblogic.work.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:172)
javax.faces.application.ViewExpiredException: viewId:/error.xhtml - View /error.xhtml could not be restored.
    at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.RestoreViewPhase.execute(RestoreViewPhase.java:180)
    at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.phase(LifecycleImpl.java:248)
    at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.execute(LifecycleImpl.java:117)
    at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:244)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper$ServletServiceAction.run(StubSecurityHelper.java:226)
    at weblogic.servlet.internal.StubSecurityHelper.invokeServlet(StubSecurityHelper.java:124)

I´m using the jsf version Mojarra 1.2_09, richfaces 3.2.1.GA and facelets 1.1.13.

Hope some help :(

Answer 1

I think this largely depends on your JSF implementation. I've heard that some will render blank screens.

The one we were using would throw error 500's with a stack trace. Other times out buttons wouldn't work without any error for the user. This was all during our development phase.

But the best advice I can give you is to catch the exceptions and log them in an error log so you have the stack trace for debugging later. For messages that we couldn't do anything about like a backend failing we would just add a fatal message to the FacesContext that gets displayed on the screen and log the stack trace.