The Central Exception Reporting Sample Application Quick-Start FAQ

                                                      Christoph Knabe, 2014-04-01

The Central Exception Reporting Sample Application.

• It's a little CRUD application for managing clients. You can create, edit, list, and delete clients.
• You can run it in 4 variants: {Struts|Swing} * {Java|AspectJ}
• It is derived from the Struts Blank application.
• You could get the complete distribution from http://excrep.berlios.de/ by CVS
• Now it is migrated to Assembla.
• The place as of 2014-04-01 is at https://www.assembla.com/code/excrep/git/nodes
• It is the companion material to a german article about Central Expection Reporting in the JavaMagazin 11.07 pages 23-27.

What platform does this application run on?

• JDK 7, and
• Maven 2.2.1

In the Maven POMs it is configured to use

• Java 7, or AspectJ 7 respectively
• Jetty 9 (Servlet 3.0 container)
• Struts 1.3.10
• MulTEx 8.3

The file pom.xml manages the Struts and Swing application using simple Java, and framework specific mechanisms or the Template Method Pattern for centralized exception reporting.

The file aspect-pom.xml manages the Struts and Swing application using AspectJ and comfortable aspect-oriented mechanisms for centralized exception reporting.

How do I run and test the Struts web application using plain Java?

• type mvn -f pom.xml clean jetty:run at the command prompt for the web app using Struts specific ExceptionHandler.
• Browse http://localhost:8080/
• Elect "Create Client"
• Type in and Save some clients, they will be stored in file Persistence.ser in the working directory
• Observe exception messages after data errors (e.g. empty birth date, birth date with some period characters)
• You can see the stack trace of an error message by clicking on the link "Details".
• Click button List to see the entered clients.
• Provoke a low-level exception by making the file Persistence.ser read-only and trying to Save a client.
• Stop the web app by typing <Ctrl/C> in the command window.

How do I run and test the Swing application using plain Java?

• type mvn -f pom.xml clean test at the command prompt for the Swing app using Template Method Pattern.
• A GUI will appear, where you can do the same things as above.
• You can see the stack trace of an error message by clicking on the button "Show Stack Trace".
• Stop the application by closing all windows of it.

How do I run and test the Struts web application using AspectJ?

• type mvn -f aspect-pom.xml clean jetty:run at the command prompt for the web app using AspectJ for exception reporting.
• In the stack traces you can see, that exceptions are caught by an around advice.

How do I run and test the Swing application using AspectJ?

• type mvn -f aspect-pom.xml clean test at the command prompt for the Swing app using AspectJ for exception reporting.
• In the stack traces you can see, that exceptions are caught by an around advice.

Where are the Message Resources?

• In the file MessageResources.properties. The original, which you may edit, is under src/main/resources/

Why did the changes to my MessageResources.properties or other resource file disappear? Why didn't the changes to my MessageResources.properties or other resource file appear?

• The original resource files are under src/main/resources/ and copied to target/classes/ during a build. Change the content of src/main/resources/MessageResources.properties and rebuild before running it again. The exception message texts extracted from the JavaDoc comments of all exceptions under src/main/java/ are collected by the ExceptionMessagesDoclet as configured for the maven-javadoc-plugin.

Where is the article?

It is in subdirectory doc in various formats.