As in many situations, your code is doing exactly what you coded it to do.
Let's jump to the end of your code to this line:
return writer.toString();
This calls the toString() method of the class. Since PrintWriter doesn't
define a method toString, you walk up the inheritance chain until you get to
the parent class that does define the method, in this case the Object class.
For the Object class, the documentation for the method toString says "The
toString method for class Object returns a string consisting of the name of
the class of which the object is an instance, the at-sign character `@', and
the unsigned hexadecimal representation of the hash code of the object." So,
it's printing out the hash code because that's what you told it to do.
The other reason that it doesn't work is that PrintWriter does not hold the
string you give it so that you can retrieve it at a later time. PrintWriter
sends stuff to a stream of some kind and does not retain what you give it.
This line of code creates a PrintWriter instance which will write what you
give it to the OutputStream defined by System.out:
> PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(System.out);
>
So every line of code like
> writer.println(e.nextElement().toString());
>
sends a string to System.out.
There are probably several approaches to get what you want. Here are two
suggestions:
1. Throw out all the PrintWriter stuff. Inside your method create a
StringBuffer object. Append all the information you want to the StringBuffer
object. Return StringBuffer.toString(). This gives you a String that you can
send back to the browser with the HttpServletResponse object.
2. Send the HttpServletResponse object to the method. Have the method send
the HTML page directly back to the browser using the response object.
K Mukhar
> ----------
> From: Java List[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Reply To: A mailing list for discussion about Sun Microsystem's Java
> Servlet API Technology.
> Sent: Thursday, June 17, 1999 2:33 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Error Handeling Methods
>
> I've written two static methods for handeling errors in my Servlets. The
> return value is a PrintWriter object which contains the errors formattted
> in an HTML page. One of the methods takes a single (String) error as
> it's arguement, and the other takes multiple errors (Vector) as its
> arguement. When I try to print this returned PrintWriter object in my
> Servlet, I'm getting a hash code rather than a String - ( i.e.
> java.io.PrintWriter@b44b5d6f)
>
> Any Suggestions???
>
> -Nash
>
>
> Here's one of the error handeling method:
> ---------
> public static String getMultipleErrorsAsString(Vector error) {
>
> PrintWriter writer = new PrintWriter(System.out);
> Header errorHead = new Header("Error");
> Body errorBody = new Body("#FFFFFF");
> writer.println(errorHead.printBasicHeader());
> writer.println(errorBody.printBasicBody());
> for (Enumeration e = error.elements();
> e.hasMoreElements();) {
> writer.println(e.nextElement().toString());
> }
> writer.println("</body></html>");
>
> return writer.toString(); // <-- Why does this return a
> hash code
> rather than a String?
> }
>
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