I'm using proXML to gather dynamic data from a php script, but every once in a while the server fails to generate the result or is unavailable (flakey network?). But in any case when I try to load data at this time, a RuntimeException is thrown by this code in proXML:

   try {
     URL url = new URL(filename);
     stream = url.openStream();
     return stream;

   } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
     // not a url, that's fine

   } catch (IOException e) {
     throw new RuntimeException("Error downloading from URL " + filename);
   }

The problem is that I cannot seem to catch this exception in my applet using:

   try
   {
     XMLInOut xml_data_loader = new XMLInOut( my_applet );
     String[] xml_file_path = xml_data_path.split("/");
     xml_data = xml_data_loader.loadElementFrom( "http://wwwtest.loni.ucla.edu/cluster_activity/check.php?mode=xml&file="+xml_file_path[xml_file_path.length-1] );
   }
   catch(RuntimeException r)
   {
     println("RuntimeException!");
     return;
   }

Is it necessary for proXML to throw a runtime exception? But in any case I'm not sure why that exception isn't caught.

I just tried it but unfortunately it still wasn't caught. I'm not sure how this exception skips through the try block to reach the runtime environment.