Using Icefaces 2, if an error occurs during execution of an action method on a standard (=not icefaces) h:commandButton, it just seems the button has no action. No error page is displayed, although it is configured to do so in web.xml.
I can make it work by surrounding the tag with
<f:ajax disabled="true">...</f:ajax>
But I'd want to either disable this automatic ajax from Icefaces (see question How to disable unsollicited ajax on standard components (h:commandButton) while using Icefaces? ), or make the error page work anyway.
JSF implementation is Mojarra 2.1 which comes with Glassfish 3.1.
The basic problem is that Icefaces captures the submit button and puts ajax in it. I think this is simply bad behavior: I understand that something like that could happen in a ice:commandButton or even under ice:form, but it happens to h:commandButton to h:form as well. This can be disabled, as per http://wiki.icefaces.org/display/ICE/Configuration , by setting autorender context parameter to false in web.xml . But then, you need to explicitely enable this behavior on every icefaces form (you get an error otherwise).
Anyway, as stated here: http://wiki.icefaces.org/display/ICE/Handling+Exceptions, putting this script in the page basically solves the problem:
//Assign your error handling function to a variable
var iceErrorCallback = function iceHandleError(statusCode, responseTxt, responseDOM) {
//Handle all errors by simply redirecting to an error page
window.location.href = "./generalError.xhtml";
}
//Safely check if ICEfaces is available
if (ice) {
//Turn off the popups as we plan to handle this ourselves
ice.configuration.disableDefaultIndicators = true;
//Register your error handler as a callback
ice.onServerError(iceErrorCallback);
}
Update: I had to patch some Icefaces javascript for it to work, see http://jira.icefaces.org/browse/ICE-6546 . I know realize normal Icefaces behavior is displaying a popup with the error, which didn't happen.