Stack trace as String

Converting a stack trace into a String is done with Throwable.printStackTrace(PrintWriter).

If desired, a customized stack trace String can be defined by using the StackTraceElement class, as shown below.

Example

import java.io.*;

/**

* Simple utilities to return the stack trace of an

* exception as a String.

*/

public final class StackTraceUtil {

  public static String getStackTrace(Throwable aThrowable) {

    final Writer result = new StringWriter();

    final PrintWriter printWriter = new PrintWriter(result);

    aThrowable.printStackTrace(printWriter);

    return result.toString();

  }

  /**

  * Defines a custom format for the stack trace as String.

  */

  public static String getCustomStackTrace(Throwable aThrowable) {

    //add the class name and any message passed to constructor

    final StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder( "BOO-BOO: " );

    result.append(aThrowable.toString());

    final String NEW_LINE = System.getProperty("line.separator");

    result.append(NEW_LINE);

    //add each element of the stack trace

    for (StackTraceElement element : aThrowable.getStackTrace() ){

      result.append( element );

      result.append( NEW_LINE );

    }

    return result.toString();

  }

  /** Demonstrate output.  */

  public static void main (String... aArguments){

    final Throwable throwable = new IllegalArgumentException("Blah");

    System.out.println( getStackTrace(throwable) );

    System.out.println( getCustomStackTrace(throwable) );

  }

} 

An example run of this class : 

>java -cp . StackTraceUtil
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Blah
        at StackTraceUtil.main(StackTraceUtil.java:42)

BOO-BOO: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Blah
StackTraceUtil.main(StackTraceUtil.java:42)