Freemarker errors in themes cause 500 server errors

• Type: Feature Request
• Status: Open
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: None
• Fix Version/s: None
• Component/s: Liferay Themes
• Labels: None

Freemarker errors causes pages to render 500 server errors due to Freemarker being terrible at handling errors. Velocity would skip over errors and still render a page however when using Freemarker in theme portals then become much more vunerable to 500 errors. Put this in a custom site theme in portal_normal.ftl somewhere near the bottom of the HTML source order. This is an example you can trigger any kind of Freemarker error to reproduce.

 

I purposefully made an error here ... "??has_content"

<#if propsUtil.get("mycustomfield.googleanalytics.globalkey")??has_content>
 <#assign gkey = propsUtil.get("mycustomfield.googleanalytics.globalkey") />
<#else>
 <#assign gkey = "UA-4324324234234234324234234234-4">
</#if>

 

This will trigger a 500 server error that takes the whole portal offline.

 

Expected
Better error handling

Actual
Appalling error handling.

 

 

HTTP Status 500 – Internal Server Error

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Type Exception Report

Message Unable to process template mercury-theme_SERVLET_CONTEXT_/templates/portal_normal.ftl

Description The server encountered an unexpected condition that prevented it from fulfilling the request.

Exception