Disable all default HTTP error response content in Tomcat

Question

By default, Tomcat sends some HTML content back to the client if it encounters something like an HTTP 404. I know that via web.xml an

Answer 1

The quick, slightly dirty, but easy way of stopping Tomcat from sending any error body is to call setErrorReportValveClass against the tomcat host, with a custom error report valve which overrides report to do nothing. ie:

public class SecureErrorReportValve extends ErrorReportValve {

@Override
protected void report(Request request,Response response,Throwable throwable) {
}

}

and set it with:

  ((StandardHost) tomcat.getHost()).setErrorReportValveClass(yourErrorValveClassName);

If you want to send your message, and just think Tomcat shouldn't mess with it, you want something along the lines of:

@Override
protected void report(final Request request, final Response response, final Throwable throwable) {
    String message = response.getMessage();
    if (message != null) {
        try {
            response.getWriter().print(message);
            response.finishResponse();
        } catch (IOException e) {
        }
    }
}