error-page configuration in web.xml transforms the HTTP code returned in case of 404

Question

I work on a JSF application powered by Tomcat 7.0.35. I would like to create a custom error page and have therefore played with the <error-page> tag in the web.xml configuration file.

<error-page>
    <error-code>404</error-code>
    <location>/error</location>
</error-page>

It seems to work in the sense that in case of a 404, the page returned has the correct HTTP body. However the HTTP return code is 200. The expected 404 was correctly received when <error-page> was not configured.

The same soft-404 problem happens if <error-code> is not specified.

<error-page>
    <location>/error</location>
</error-page>

I am looking for a way to configure this error page without losing the error code.

Two more pieces of information that might be useful :

The JSF project stage is Production

Pretty URLs are being handled by Pretty Faces 3.3.3 with the following

@Named(value = "error")
@RequestScoped
@URLMappings(mappings = {
    @URLMapping(id = "error", pattern = "/error", viewId = "/faces/error.xhtml")})
public class ErrorController implements Serializable {

Are you sure if you have a way to access `http://localhost:8080/YourProject/error` from an internet browser? — Luiggi Mendoza, Apr 16 '13 at 15:30
Yes. I have added the code configuring the /error URL (with PrettyFaces) — clark, Apr 17 '13 at 19:57

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 17 '13 at 15:39

Sometimes containers do not seem to behave very nicely when you have an Error page handled by a servlet filter. In this case it looks like you probably have mapped "/error" with PrettyFaces, and are forwarding that internally to another resource. (PrettyFaces works with Servlet forwards)

I believe what occurs here, is the container sees that new Forward, forgets that it was actually showing an error page, and sends a 200 status because the Forwarded request was successful.

What you will need to do to resolve this, is add an <action>#{bean.send404}</action> that sets the 404 status in your error page prettyfaces mapping.

<url-mapping>
   <pattern value="/error" />
   <view-id="/faces/error.xhtml" />
   <action>#{bean.send404}</action>
</url-mapping>

Then your bean method will need to get a hold of the HttpServletResponse, which ou can usually get from the FacesContext:

HttpServletResponse response = (HttpServletResponse)FacesContext.getCurrentInstance()
         .getExternalContext().getResponse();
response.sendError(HttpServletResponse.SC_NOT_FOUND);

That should do the trick for you.

Yes, my final solution is a bit more complicated than that since I deal with the error_code but also the message, but your answer is what I needed. For future readers, you can get the request parameters for the error information from https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/servletapi/constant-values.html — clark, Apr 22 '13 at 13:38

error-page configuration in web.xml transforms the HTTP code returned in case of 404

1 Answers1