Page 461

Page 461 says that the exception implicit object is available
only to error pages with an explicitly-defined page directive:
<%@ page isErrorPage="true" %>

However, in practice the implicit exception object is available to
the following code (errorPage.jsp):
<html>
<body>
${pageContext.exception}
</body>
</html>

And it is not avaolable to the following code (errorPage.jsp):
<html>
<body>
<%
out.print(exception.getMessage());
%>
</body>
</html>

The page that throws the exception is, badPage.jsp:
<%@ page errorPage="errorPage.jsp" %>
<html>
<body>
<%
int x = 10/0;
%>
</body>
</html>

Please explain me this problem. I am using Tomcat 5 with IE 6.
I searched the forum before posting this, but I cannot find anything useful.

Advance thanks.

You are not using the exception implicit object here. What you're doing is access the exception property of the PageContext. The
container will call PageContext#getException, which, like any methods, will always be available. What the book is talking about is the exception implicit object, which you can access like this :

This object is only available to pages which have their isErrorPage attribute set to true.

Hi Christophe ,

EL does not have 'exception' as an implicit object. The only way to get the exception object is to go through the pageContext implicit object. So even if a jsp page is declared as an error page (using isErrorPage="true"), ${exception} will not work. Correct me if i am wrong.

Oops, that's right, thanks for correcting. This implicit object can be accessed via a scriptlet

See Table JSP.1-7 in the JSP Specification for more.