Delivery Tier Error Pages and Error Handling

The delivery tier (HST) in Bloomreach Content supports several approaches for implementing dynamic and customizable error pages and error handling. This topic covers multiple strategies, each with different levels of flexibility and complexity. Documentation for these approaches is divided across several pages. The initial methods are straightforward but offer limited customization. Some solutions can be combined to achieve more comprehensive error handling. The most advanced approach provides granular control over exception handling for developers who require it.

Proper error handling is essential. Setting accurate HTTP response headers is critical, especially for search engine indexing. For example, returning a 200 status code for a 404 error page can result in search engines indexing your error page as valid content, which can negatively impact search rankings.

The HST cannot generate a dynamic error page—such as one with a repository-based menu—if it fails to start due to issues like invalid Spring configuration or an unavailable repository connection. In these cases, the system returns an

HttpServletResponse.SC_SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE

response, which corresponds to a 503 status code.

Error Pages and Error Handling Approaches

1. Handle Error Codes and Exceptions in web.xml
2. Add a Catch-All Sitemap Item that Creates a Dynamic 404 Page
3. Simple Exception Handling
4. Advanced Exception Handling