How to handle errors if error component doesn't exist yet

@saurav

The APPLICATION.coms.fw.error is a component that has been instantiated into the APPLICATION scope (so that it is available to all user across the application) and is designed to handle errors that we've "handled" via CFTRY/CFCATCH blocks.  You don't need the TYPE attribute if you want to use "any" as it is the default action.

@BKBK

I read the entire article and it goes into basic tools that ColdFusion has for handling errors (CFTRY/CFCATCH) using the onError() method in the application.cfc, etc.  But it doesn't seem to address the issue I'm having.  I want to be able to call my error handler component stored in APPLICATION.coms.fw.error, but I don't know if it exists yet.

What I've taken to trying is to using the CFMODULE tag inside my CFCATCH tags.  It points to a 'handled-exceptions.cfm' module that has code in it which does the following:

<cfif THISTAG.executionMode eq 'start'>
     <cfif isNull( APPLICATION.coms.fw.error )>
          <!--- The error-handling component isn't yet instantiated. --->
          <cflog file="#ATTRIBUTES.logFilename#" text="#ATTRIBUTES.logMessage#" type="#ATTRIBUTES.logSeverity#" />
          <cfdump var="#ATTRIBUTES.logMessage#" abort="true" />
     <cfelse>
          <!--- The error-handling component exists, so let's use it instead. --->
          <cfset APPLICATION.coms.fw.error.processHandledException(
               message = "#ATTRIBUTES.logMessage#"
          ,     catchData = ATTRIBUTES.catchData
          ) />
     </cfif>
<cfelse>
</cfif>

That way, whenever I need to determine if the error component exists AND call it at the same time, I can do something like:

<cftry>
     <!--- Do something here that causes an error. --->
     <cfcatch>
          <cfmodule
               template="/path/to/handled-exceptions.cfm"
               attributecollection="#{
                    message = 'This is a message about the error we caught'
               ,     catchData = CFCATCH
               }#" />
     </cfcatch>
</cftry>

This has been about the best implementation I've found.