Advanced error handling ideas

[ahus1]

We at our company are exploring advanced error handling ideas. The basic error handling to end the conversation and to display a standard page can be quite annoying for the user.

First I like to share and discuss ideas, and I'm happy to share the code that is already available for this.

Do you think anything should become standard in SEAM? Or should I document it in the FAQ?

The ideas (first matching rule completes the error handling):

(1) when the error occurs during a POST request, return to the last known view in the conversation and display the error message

(2) when the error occurs in a pageflow, reposition the pageflow at the last known node and display the error message

(3) when there is a nested conversation, end the current conversation and display the message on the last known view of the parent conversation

(4) if there is no other remedy, use a default error page

The pages.xml would look like this:

 <exception class="java.lang.Exception">
  <redirect
   view-id="#{exceptionHandler.getViewId('/sportal/error.jspx')}">
   <message severity="error">
    #{messages[exceptionHandler.getMessage(org.jboss.seam.handledException)]}
   </message>
  </redirect>
 </exception>

What do you think about the ideas?

Alexander.

[admin.admin.email.tld]

when you say error handling do you mean exception handling or validation error handling via Hibernate Validators?

I'm thinking you mean exception handling.  For example, a DB exception (e.g., transaction failed for some reason), user gets re-directed to generic error.xhtml.  and presumably must re-start conversation/use case.

So you're saying in this case, the LRC is demoted to temporary conversation.  Why does that demotion need to happen?  Why can't user have a link to go back to previous page and re-exec the use case?

[ahus1]

Sool,

how would you like to redirect the use to the previous page? Javascript? Or is there any other way to do this?

Redirecting her/him to the original page (where they are able to change i.e. their inputs) and displaying the error message at the same time sounds like a good idea to me.

I posted my code on another thread, the exception handler posted there works with any exception.

Error Handling w/ JPDL

Alexander.