In this tutorial, we're gonna look at an Spring Boot example that uses @ControllerAdvice and @ExceptionHandler for global exception handling in Spring Boot.

More Practice:

Unit Test:

Exception handling Problem

We've created Rest Controller for CRUD Operations and finder method.
Let look at the code:
(step by step to build the Rest APIs is in:



@RestController
public class TutorialController {

  @Autowired
  TutorialRepository tutorialRepository;

  @GetMapping("/tutorials")
  public ResponseEntity<List<Tutorial>> getAllTutorials(@RequestParam(required = false) String title) {
    try {
      ...
      return new ResponseEntity<>(tutorials, HttpStatus.OK);
    } catch (Exception e) {
      return new ResponseEntity<>(null, HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
    }
  }

  @GetMapping("/tutorials/{id}")
  public ResponseEntity<Tutorial> getTutorialById(@PathVariable("id") long id) {
    Optional<Tutorial> tutorialData = tutorialRepository.findById(id);

    if (tutorialData.isPresent()) {
      return new ResponseEntity<>(tutorialData.get(), HttpStatus.OK);
    } else {
      return new ResponseEntity<>(HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND);
    }
  }

  @PutMapping("/tutorials/{id}")
  public ResponseEntity<Tutorial> updateTutorial(@PathVariable("id") long id, @RequestBody Tutorial tutorial) {
    Optional<Tutorial> tutorialData = tutorialRepository.findById(id);

    if (tutorialData.isPresent()) {
      ...
      return new ResponseEntity<>(tutorialRepository.save(_tutorial), HttpStatus.OK);
    } else {
      return new ResponseEntity<>(HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND);
    }
  }

  ...

  @DeleteMapping("/tutorials/{id}")
  public ResponseEntity<HttpStatus> deleteTutorial(@PathVariable("id") long id) {
    try {
      tutorialRepository.deleteById(id);
      return new ResponseEntity<>(HttpStatus.NO_CONTENT);
    } catch (Exception e) {
      return new ResponseEntity<>(HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
    }
  }

  @DeleteMapping("/tutorials")
  public ResponseEntity<HttpStatus> deleteAllTutorials() {
    // try and catch
  }

  @GetMapping("/tutorials/published")
  public ResponseEntity<List<Tutorial>> findByPublished() {
    // try and catch
  }
}

You can see that we use try/catch many times for similar exception (INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR), and there are also many cases that return NOT_FOUND.

Is there any way to keep them simple, any way to attach the error response message smartly and flexibility?
Let's solve the problem now.

Exception Handler with Controller Advice in Spring

Spring supports exception handling by a global Exception Handler (@ExceptionHandler) with Controller Advice (@ControllerAdvice). This enables a mechanism that makes ResponseEntity work with the type safety and flexibility of @ExceptionHandler:



@ControllerAdvice
public class ControllerExceptionHandler {

  @ExceptionHandler(value = {ResourceNotFoundException.class, CertainException.class})
  public ResponseEntity<ErrorMessage> resourceNotFoundException(ResourceNotFoundException ex, WebRequest request) {
    ErrorMessage message = new ErrorMessage(
        status,
        date,
        ex.getMessage(),
        description);

    return new ResponseEntity<ErrorMessage>(message, HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND);
  }
}

The @ControllerAdvice annotation is specialization of @Component annotation so that it is auto-detected via classpath scanning. A Controller Advice is a kind of interceptor that surrounds the logic in our Controllers and allows us to apply some common logic to them.

Its methods (annotated with @ExceptionHandler) are shared globally across multiple @Controller components to capture exceptions and translate them to HTTP responses. The @ExceptionHandler annotation indicates which type of Exception we want to handle. The exception instance and the request will be injected via method arguments.

By using two annotations together, we can:

control the body of the response along with status code
handle several exceptions in the same method

@ResponseStatus

In the example above, we use @ControllerAdvice for REST web services and return ResponseEntity object additionally.

Spring also provides @ResponseBody annotation which tells a controller that the object returned is automatically serialized into JSON and passed it to the HttpResponse object. This way does not require ResponseEntity but you need to use @ResponseStatus to set the HTTP status code for that exception.



@ControllerAdvice
@ResponseBody
public class ControllerExceptionHandler {

  @ExceptionHandler(ResourceNotFoundException.class)
  @ResponseStatus(value = HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND)
  public ErrorMessage resourceNotFoundException(ResourceNotFoundException ex, WebRequest request) {
    ErrorMessage message = new ErrorMessage(...);
    return message;
  }
}

Setup Spring Boot Project

You can follow step by step, or get source code in one of following posts:

The Spring Project contains structure that we only need to add some changes to make the pagination work well.

Or you can get the new Github source code at the end of this tutorial.

The final project structure will be like this:

Define Error Response Message

We want to create a our own message response structure instead of using default error response provided by Spring Boot.
Let's define a specific error response structure.

exception/ErrorMessage.java



package com.bezkoder.spring.exhandling.exception;

import java.util.Date;

public class ErrorMessage {
  private int statusCode;
  private Date timestamp;
  private String message;
  private String description;

  public ErrorMessage(int statusCode, Date timestamp, String message, String description) {
    this.statusCode = statusCode;
    this.timestamp = timestamp;
    this.message = message;
    this.description = description;
  }

  public int getStatusCode() {
    return statusCode;
  }

  public Date getTimestamp() {
    return timestamp;
  }

  public String getMessage() {
    return message;
  }

  public String getDescription() {
    return description;
  }
}

Create Custom Exception

We're gonna throw an exception for Resource not found in Spring Boot controller.
Lets create a ResourceNotFoundException class that extends RuntimeException.

exception/ResourceNotFoundException.java



package com.bezkoder.spring.exhandling.exception;

public class ResourceNotFoundException extends RuntimeException {

  private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

  public ResourceNotFoundException(String msg) {
    super(msg);
  }
}

Create Controller Advice with @ExceptionHandler

Now we're gonna create a special class which is annotated by @ControllerAdvice annotation. This class handles specific exception (ResoureNotFoundException) and global Exception in only one place.

exception/ControllerExceptionHandler.java



package com.bezkoder.spring.exhandling.exception;

import java.util.Date;

import org.springframework.http.HttpStatus;
import org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ControllerAdvice;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ExceptionHandler;
import org.springframework.web.context.request.WebRequest;

import com.bezkoder.spring.exhandling.exception.ErrorMessage;
import com.bezkoder.spring.exhandling.exception.ResourceNotFoundException;

@ControllerAdvice
public class ControllerExceptionHandler {

  @ExceptionHandler(ResourceNotFoundException.class)
  public ResponseEntity<ErrorMessage> resourceNotFoundException(ResourceNotFoundException ex, WebRequest request) {
    ErrorMessage message = new ErrorMessage(
        HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND.value(),
        new Date(),
        ex.getMessage(),
        request.getDescription(false));

    return new ResponseEntity<ErrorMessage>(message, HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND);
  }

  @ExceptionHandler(Exception.class)
  public ResponseEntity<ErrorMessage> globalExceptionHandler(Exception ex, WebRequest request) {
    ErrorMessage message = new ErrorMessage(
        HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR.value(),
        new Date(),
        ex.getMessage(),
        request.getDescription(false));

    return new ResponseEntity<ErrorMessage>(message, HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
  }
}

Modify Controller for using @ControllerAdvice

Our Rest Controller now doesn't have try/catch block, and it will throw ResourceNotFoundException where we want to send NOT_FOUND notification in response message.

controller/TutorialController.java



package com.bezkoder.spring.exhandling.controller;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.http.HttpStatus;
import org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.CrossOrigin;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.DeleteMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PathVariable;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PostMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PutMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestBody;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

import com.bezkoder.spring.exhandling.exception.ResourceNotFoundException;
import com.bezkoder.spring.exhandling.model.Tutorial;
import com.bezkoder.spring.exhandling.repository.TutorialRepository;

@CrossOrigin(origins = "http://localhost:8081")
@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api")
public class TutorialController {

  @Autowired
  TutorialRepository tutorialRepository;

  @GetMapping("/tutorials")
  public ResponseEntity<List<Tutorial>> getAllTutorials(@RequestParam(required = false) String title) {
    List<Tutorial> tutorials = new ArrayList<Tutorial>();

    if (title == null)
      tutorialRepository.findAll().forEach(tutorials::add);
    else
      tutorialRepository.findByTitleContaining(title).forEach(tutorials::add);

    if (tutorials.isEmpty()) {
      return new ResponseEntity<>(HttpStatus.NO_CONTENT);
    }

    return new ResponseEntity<>(tutorials, HttpStatus.OK);
  }

  @GetMapping("/tutorials/{id}")
  public ResponseEntity<Tutorial> getTutorialById(@PathVariable("id") long id) {
    Tutorial tutorial = tutorialRepository.findById(id)
        .orElseThrow(() -> new ResourceNotFoundException("Not found Tutorial with id = " + id));

    return new ResponseEntity<>(tutorial, HttpStatus.OK);
  }

  @PostMapping("/tutorials")
  public ResponseEntity<Tutorial> createTutorial(@RequestBody Tutorial tutorial) {
    Tutorial _tutorial = tutorialRepository.save(new Tutorial(tutorial.getTitle(), tutorial.getDescription(), false));
    return new ResponseEntity<>(_tutorial, HttpStatus.CREATED);
  }

  @PutMapping("/tutorials/{id}")
  public ResponseEntity<Tutorial> updateTutorial(@PathVariable("id") long id, @RequestBody Tutorial tutorial) {
    Tutorial _tutorial = tutorialRepository.findById(id)
        .orElseThrow(() -> new ResourceNotFoundException("Not found Tutorial with id = " + id));

    _tutorial.setTitle(tutorial.getTitle());
    _tutorial.setDescription(tutorial.getDescription());
    _tutorial.setPublished(tutorial.isPublished());

    return new ResponseEntity<>(tutorialRepository.save(_tutorial), HttpStatus.OK);
  }

  @DeleteMapping("/tutorials/{id}")
  public ResponseEntity<HttpStatus> deleteTutorial(@PathVariable("id") long id) {
    tutorialRepository.deleteById(id);

    return new ResponseEntity<>(HttpStatus.NO_CONTENT);
  }

  @DeleteMapping("/tutorials")
  public ResponseEntity<HttpStatus> deleteAllTutorials() {
    tutorialRepository.deleteAll();

    return new ResponseEntity<>(HttpStatus.NO_CONTENT);
  }

  @GetMapping("/tutorials/published")
  public ResponseEntity<List<Tutorial>> findByPublished() {
    List<Tutorial> tutorials = tutorialRepository.findByPublished(true);

    if (tutorials.isEmpty()) {
      return new ResponseEntity<>(HttpStatus.NO_CONTENT);
    }

    return new ResponseEntity<>(tutorials, HttpStatus.OK);
  }

}

Run and Test

We finish implementing CRUD REST APIs and exception handling for it.
Run Spring Boot application with command: mvn spring-boot:run.

Get a non-existent tutorial:

Update a non-existent tutorial:

Create tutorial with wrong fields:

Delete a non-existent tutorial:

Conclusion

Today we've built Global Exception Handling class for Spring Boot Rest APIs using @ControllerAdvice and @ExceptionHandler. Now you can create your own custom exception handler class or handle global exception in single place at ease.

If you want to add Pagination to this Spring project, you can find the instruction at:
Spring Boot Pagination & Filter example | Spring JPA, Pageable

To sort/order by multiple fields:
Spring Data JPA Sort/Order by multiple Columns | Spring Boot

Or way to write Unit Test:

You can also know how to deploy this Spring Boot App on AWS (for free) with this tutorial.
Dockerize with Docker Compose: Spring Boot and MySQL example
Or: Docker Compose: Spring Boot and Postgres example

Happy learning! See you again.