Java exception: "Can't get a Writer while an OutputStream is already in use" when running xAgent

Question

I am trying to implement Paul Calhoun's Apache FOP solution for creating PDF's from Xpages (from Notes In 9 #102). I am getting the following java exception when trying to run the xAgent that does the processing --> Can't get a Writer while an OutputStream is already in use

The only changes that I have done from Paul's code was to change the package name. I have isolated when the exception happens to the SSJS line: var jce: DominoXMLFO2PDF = new DominoXMLFO2PDF(); All that line does is instantiate the class, there is no custom constructor. I don't believe it is the code itself, but some configuration issue. The SSJS code is in the beforeRenderResponse event where it should be, I haven't changed anything on the xAgent.

I have copied the jar files from Paul's sample database to mine, I have verified that the build paths are the same between the two databases. Everything compiles fine (after I did all this.) This exception appears to be an xpages only exception.

Answer 1

Here's what's really going on with this error:

XPages are essentially servlets... everything that happens in an XPage is just layers on top of a servlet engine. There are basically two types of data that a servlet can send back to whatever is initiating the connection (e.g. a browser): text and binary.

An ordinary XPage sends text -- specifically, HTML. Some xAgents also send text, such as JSON or XML. In any of these scenarios, however, Domino uses a Java Writer to send the response content, because Writers are optimized for sending Character data.

When we need to send binary content, we use an OutputStream instead, because streams are optimized for sending generic byte data. So if we're sending PDF, DOC/XLS/PPT, images, etc., we need to use a stream, because we're sending binary data, not text.

The catch (as you'll soon see, that's a pun) is that we can only use one per response.

Once any HTTP client is told what the content type of a response is, it makes assumptions about how to process that content. So if you tell it to expect application/pdf, it's expecting to only receive binary data. Conversely, if you tell it to expect application/json, it's expecting to only receive character data. If the response includes any data that doesn't match the promised content type, that nearly always invalidates the entire response.

So Domino in its infinite wisdom protects us from making this mistake by only allowing us to send one or the other in a single request, and throws an exception if we disobey that rule.

Unfortunately... if there's any exception in our code when we're trying to send binary content, Domino wants to report that to the consumer... which tries to invoke the output writer to send HTML reporting that something went wrong. Except we already got a handle on the output stream, so Domino isn't allowed to get a handle on the output writer, because that would violate its own rule against only using one per response. This, in turn, throws the exception you reported, masking the exception that actually caused the problem (in your case, probably a ClassNotFoundException).

So how do we make sure that we see the real problem, and not this misdirection? We try:

try {
  /*
   * Move all your existing code here...
   */
} catch (e) {
  print("Error generating dynamic PDF: " + e.toString());
} finally {
  facesContext.responseComplete();
}

There are two reasons this is a preferred approach:

1. If something goes wrong with our code, we don't let Domino throw an exception about it. Instead, we log it (instead of using print to send it to the console and log, you could also toss it to OpenLog, or whatever your preferred logging mechanism happens to be). This means that Domino doesn't try to report the error to the user, because we've promised that we already reported it to ourselves.
2. By moving the crucial facesContext.responseComplete() call (which is what ultimately tells Domino not to send any content of its own) to the finally block, this ensures it will get executed. If we left it inside the try block, it would get skipped if an exception occurs, because we'd skip straight to the catch... so even though Domino isn't reporting our exception because we caught it, it still tries to invoke the response writer because we didn't tell it not to.

If you follow the above pattern, and something's wrong with your code, then the browser will receive an incomplete or corrupt file, but the log will tell you what went wrong, rather than reporting an error that has nothing to do with the root cause of the problem.