Global exception handler (oracle.adf.view.rich.context.ExceptionHandler) in ADF

By look of it how hard it can to simply register an exception handler to capture the "unhandled ones", well it took a hell lot of my time -  nearly a week spent to figure out what was that I was doing wrong. 

To give a context - I was trying to implement the global exception handler (adf_controller_exception_handler) by extending oracle.adf.view.rich.context.ExceptionHandler class and putting the fully qualified name of the implemented class in .adf/META-INF/services/oracle.adf.view.rich.context.ExceptionHandler.txt file.

I saw it working in local jDeveloper (Studio Edition Version 11.1.1.6.0) when deployed to integrated server it didn't work when deployed to dev. server. 

I banged my head a lot on this and was finally able solve it ! The issue was with the .adf/META-INF/services folder declaration - it seemed when deploying to server the exception handler was not getting registered. To debug the registered services you need to use the following.

1.             
2.           ServiceLoader compilers = ServiceLoader.load(ExceptionHandler.class);  
3.             _logger.info(compilers.toString());  
4.             for (ExceptionHandler compiler : compilers) {  
5.                 _logger.info("******ExceptionHandler*********" + compiler);  
6.             }  
7. 
   

If you check the loggers, the exception handler should be listed, if not then create a jar file with the exception handler class and the put the services folder along-with with the exception handler file (not a text file ) inside the META-INF of the jar file. Last step - put the jar file in WEB-INF/lib in your controller project.