The entire exception handling process starts with an event. This helps keep your application minimally coupled to Solder, but also allows for further extension. Exception handling in Solder is all about letting you take care of exceptions the way that makes the most sense for your application. Events provide this delicate balance.
There are three means of firing the event to start the exception handling process:
manual firing of the event
using an interceptor
module integration - no code needs to be changed
Manually firing an event to use Solder's exception handling is primarily used in your own try/catch blocks. It's very painless and also easy. Let's examine an sample that might exist inside of a simple business logic lookup into an inventory database:
@Stateless
public class InventoryActions {
@PersistenceContext private EntityManager em;@Inject private Event<ExceptionToCatch> catchEvent;
public Integer queryForItem(Item item) {
try {
Query q = em.createQuery("SELECT i from Item i where i.id = :id");
q.setParameter("id", item.getId());
return q.getSingleResult();
} catch (PersistenceException e) {catchEvent.fire(new ExceptionToCatch(e));
}
}
}
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The event is fired with a new instance of |
A CDI Interceptor has been added to help with integration of Solder exception handling into your
application. It's used just like any interceptor, and must be enabled in the beans.xml
file for your bean archive. This interceptor can be used at the class or method level.
This interceptor is a typical AroundInvoke interceptor and is invoked before the method
(which in this case merely wraps the call to the intercepted method in a try / catch block). The intercepted method is called
then, if an exception (actually a Throwable) occurs during execution of the intercepted
method the exception is passed to Solder (without any qualifiers). Normal flow continues from there, however,
take not of the following warning:
Warning
Using the interceptor may cause unexpected behavior to methods that call intercepted methods in which an exception occurs, please see the API docs for more information about returns if an exception occurs.
As an application developer (i.e., an end user of Solder's exception handling), you'll be focused on writing exception handlers. An exception handler is a method on a CDI bean that is invoked to handle a specific type of exception. Within that method, you can implement any logic necessary to handle or respond to the exception.
Note
If there are no exception handlers for an exception, the exception is rethrown.
Given that exception handler beans are CDI beans, they can make use of dependency injection, be scoped, have interceptors or decorators and any other functionality available to CDI beans.
Exception handler methods are designed to follow the syntax and semantics of CDI observers, with some special purpose exceptions explained in this guide. The advantage of this design is that exception handlers will be immediately familiar to you if you are studying or well-versed in CDI.
In this and subsequent chapters, you'll learn how to define an exception handler, explore how and when it gets invoked, modify
an exception and a stack trace, and even extend exception handling further through events that are fired during the handling
workflow. We'll begin by covering the two annotations that are used to declare an exception handler,
@HandlesExceptions and @Handles.
Exception handlers are contained within exception handler beans, which are CDI beans annotated with
@HandlesExceptions. Exception handlers are methods which have a parameter which is an
instance of CaughtException<T extends Throwable> annotated with the
@Handles annotation.
The @HandlesException annotation is simply a marker annotation that instructs the Solder
exception handling CDI extension to scan the bean for handler methods.
Let's designate a CDI bean as an exception handler by annotating it with
@HandlesException.
@HandlesExceptions
public class MyHandlers {}
That's all there is to it. Now we can begin defining exception handling methods on this bean.
Note
The @HandlesExceptions annotation may be deprecated in favor of annotation indexing
at a later date.
@Handles is a method parameter annotation that designates a method as an exception
handler. Exception handler methods are registered on beans annotated with
@HandlesExceptions. Solder will discover all such methods at deployment time.
Let's look at an example. The following method is invoked for every exception that Solder processes and
prints the exception message to stdout. (Throwable is the base exception type in Java and
thus represents all exceptions).
public class MyHandlers
{
{
System.out.println("Something bad happened: " +evt.getException().getMessage());
evt.markHandled();
}
}
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The |
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This handler does not modify the invocation of subsequent handlers, as designated by invoking
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The @Handles annotation must be placed on a parameter of the method, which must
be of type CaughtException<T extends Throwable>. Handler methods are similar to CDI
observers and, as such, follow the same principles and guidelines as observers (such as invocation,
injection of parameters, qualifiers, etc) with the following exceptions:
a parameter of a handler method must be a
CaughtExceptionhandlers are ordered before they are invoked (invocation order of observers is non-deterministic)
any handler can prevent subsequent handlers from being invoked
In addition to designating a method as exception handler, the @Handles
annotation specifies two pieces of information about when the method should be invoked relative to other
handler methods:
a precedence relative to other handlers for the same exception type. Handlers with higher precedence are invoked before handlers with lower precedence that handle the same exception type. The default precedence (if not specified) is 0.
the type of the traversal mode (i.e., phase) during which the handler is invoked. The default traversal mode (if not specified) is
TraversalMode.DEPTH_FIRST.
Let's take a look at more sophisticated example that uses all the features of handlers to log all exceptions.
public class MyHandlers
{
{
log.warn("Something bad happened: " + evt.getException().getMessage());
}
}
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The
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This handler has a default precedence of 0 (the default value of the precedence attribute on
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This handler is qualified with |
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Any additional parameters of a handler method are treated as injection points. These parameters are
injected into the handler when it is invoked by Solder. In this case, we are injecting a
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A handler is guaranteed to only be invoked once per exception (automatically muted), unless it re-enables
itself by invoking the unmute() method on the CaughtException instance.
Handlers must not throw checked exceptions, and should avoid throwing unchecked exceptions. Should a handler throw an unchecked exception it will propagate up the stack and all handling done via Solder will cease. Any exception that was being handled will be lost.
When an exception is thrown, chances are it's nested (wrapped) inside other exceptions. (If you've ever examined a server log, you'll appreciate this fact). The collection of exceptions in its entirety is termed an exception chain.
The outermost exception of an exception chain (e.g., EJBException, ServletException, etc) is probably of little use to exception handlers. That's why Solder doesn't simply pass the exception chain directly to the exception handlers. Instead, it intelligently unwraps the chain and treats the root exception cause as the primary exception.
The first exception handlers to be invoked by Solder are those that match the type of root cause. Thus, instead
of seeing a vague EJBException, your handlers will instead see an meaningful exception such
as ConstraintViolationException.
This feature, alone, makes Solder's exception handling a worthwhile tool.
Solder continues to work through the exception chain, notifying handlers of each exception in the stack,
until a handler flags the exception as handled. Once an exception is marked as handled, Solder stops processing
the exception. If a handler instructed Solder to rethrow the exception (by invoking
CaughtException#rethrow(), Solder will rethrow the exception outside the Solder exception handling
infrastructure. Otherwise, it simply returns flow control to the caller.
Consider a exception chain containing the following nested causes (from outer cause to root cause):
EJBException
PersistenceException
SQLGrammarException
Solder will unwrap this exception and notify handlers in the following order:
SQLGrammarException
PersistenceException
EJBException
If there's a handler for PersistenceException, it will likely prevent the handlers for
EJBException from being invoked, which is a good thing since what useful information can
really be obtained from EJBException?
While processing one of the causes in the exception chain, Solder has a specific order it uses to invoke the handlers, operating on two axes:
traversal of exception type hierarchy
relative handler precedence
We'll first address the traversal of the exception type hierarchy, then cover relative handler precedence.
Solder doesn't simply invoke handlers that match the exact type of the exception. Instead, it walks up and down the type hierarchy of the exception. It first notifies least specific handler in breadth first traversal mode, then gradually works down the type hierarchy toward handlers for the actual exception type, still in breadth first traversal. Once all breadth first traversal handlers have been invoked, the process is reversed for depth first traversal, meaning the most specific handlers are notified first and Solder continues walking up the hierarchy tree.
There are two modes of this traversal:
BREADTH_FIRST
DEPTH_FIRST
By default, handlers are registered into the DEPTH_FIRST traversal path. That means in most cases, Solder starts with handlers of the actual exception type and works up toward the handler for the least specific type.
However, when a handler is registered to be notified during the BREADTH_FIRST traversal, as in the example above, Solder will notify that exception handler before the exception handler for the actual type is notified.
Let's consider an example. Assume that Solder is handling the SocketException. It will
notify handlers in the following order:
Throwable(BREADTH_FIRST)Exception(BREADTH_FIRST)IOException(BREADTH_FIRST)SocketException(BREADTH_FIRST)SocketException(DEPTH_FIRST)IOException(DEPTH_FIRST)Exception(DEPTH_FIRST)Throwable(DEPTH_FIRST)
The same type traversal occurs for each exception processed in the chain.
In order for a handler to be notified of the IOException before the SocketException,
it would have to specify the BREADTH_FIRST traversal path explicitly:
void handleIOException(@Handles(during = TraversalMode.BREADTH_FIRST)
CaughtException<IOException> evt)
{
System.out.println("An I/O exception occurred, but not sure what type yet");
}
BREADTH_FIRST handlers are typically used for logging exceptions because they are not likely to be
short-circuited (and thus always get invoked).
When Solder finds more than one handler for the same exception type, it orders the handlers by precedence. Handlers with higher precedence are executed before handlers with a lower precedence. If Solder detects two handlers for the same type with the same precedence, it detects it as an error and throws an exception at deployment time.
Let's define two handlers with different precedence:
void handleIOExceptionFirst(@Handles(precedence = 100) CaughtException<IOException> evt)
{
System.out.println("Invoked first");
}
void handleIOExceptionSecond(@Handles CaughtException<IOException> evt)
{
System.out.println("Invoked second");
}
The first method is invoked first since it has a higher precedence (100) than the second method, which has the default precedence (0).
To make specifying precedence values more convenient, Solder provides several built-in constants, available
on the Precedence class:
BUILT_IN = -100
FRAMEWORK = -50
DEFAULT = 0
LOW = 50
HIGH = 100
To summarize, here's how Solder determines the order of handlers to invoke (until a handler marks exception as handled):
Unwrap exception stack
Begin processing root cause
Find handler for least specific handler marked for BREADTH_FIRST traversal
If multiple handlers for same type, invoke handlers with higher precedence first
Find handler for most specific handler marked for DEPTH_FIRST traversal
If multiple handlers for same type, invoke handlers with higher precedence first
Continue above steps for each exception in stack
There are two APIs provided by Solder that should be familiar to application developers:
CaughtExceptionExceptionStack
In addition to providing information about the exception being handled, the
CaughtException object contains methods to control the exception handling process, such
as rethrowing the exception, aborting the handler chain or unmuting the current handler.
Five methods exist on the CaughtException object to give flow control to the handler
abort()- terminate all handling immediately after this handler, does not mark the exception as handled, does not re-throw the exception.rethrow()- continues through all handlers, but once all handlers have been called (assuming another handler does not call abort() or handled()) the initial exception passed to Solder is rethrown. Does not mark the exception as handled.handled()- marks the exception as handled and terminates further handling.markHandled()- default. Marks the exception as handled and proceeds with the rest of the handlers.dropCause()- marks the exception as handled, but proceeds to the next cause in the cause container, without calling other handlers for the current cause.
Once a handler is invoked it is muted, meaning it will not be run again for that exception chain,
unless it's explicitly marked as unmuted via the unmute() method on
CaughtException.
ExceptionStack contains information about the exception causes relative to the current
exception cause. It is also the source of the exception types the invoked handlers are matched against. It
is accessed in handlers by calling the method getExceptionStack() on the
CaughtException object. Please see
API docs
for more information, all methods are fairly self-explanatory.
Tip
This object is mutable and can be modified before any handlers are invoked by an observer:
public void modifyStack(@Observes ExceptionStack stack) {
...
}
Modifying the ExceptionStack may be useful to remove exception types that are effectively meaningless
such as EJBException, changing the exception type to something more meaningful such
as cases like SQLException, or wrapping exceptions as custom application exception
types.