Adobe ColdFusion 8

Handling exceptions

ColdFusion provides two statements for exception handling in CFScript: try and catch. These statements are equivalent to the CFML cftry and cfcatch tags.

Note: This section does not explain exception-handling concepts. For a discussion of exception handling in ColdFusion, see Handling Errors.

Exception handling syntax and rules

Exception-handling code in CFScript has the following format:

try {
    Code where exceptions will be caught
}
catch(exceptionType exceptionVariable) {
    Code to handle exceptions of type exceptionType 
    that occur in the try block
}
... 
catch(exceptionTypeN exceptionVariableN) {
    Code to handle exceptions of type 
    exceptionTypeN that occur in the try block
}

Note: In CFScript, catch statements follow the try block; you do not put them inside the try block. This structure differs from that of the cftry tag, which must include the cfcatch tags in its body.

When you have a try statement, you must have a catch statement. In the catch block, the exceptionVariable variable contains the exception type. This variable is the equivalent of the cfcatch tag cfcatch.Type built-in variable.

Exception handling example

The following code shows exception handling in CFScript. It uses a CreateObject function to create a Java object. The catch statement executes only if the CreateObject function generates an exception. The displayed information includes the exception message; the except.Message variable is the equivalent of calling the Java getMessage method on the returned Java exception object.

<cfscript>
    try {
        emp = CreateObject("Java", "Employees");
    }
    catch(Any excpt) {
        WriteOutput("The application was unable to perform a required operation.<br>
    Please try again later.<br>If this problem persists, contact
    Customer Service and include the following information:<br>
                #excpt.Message#<br>");
    }
</cfscript>