spring boot starter web @ControllerAdvice annotation is not work without having @RestController annotation

Question

RESOLVE

in rest api application, the return type of exception handling method should be ResponseEntity or annotate the method with @ResponseBody so that spring boot can do the http serialisation.

UPDATE

starter class:

@SpringBootApplication
@ComponentScan
@EnableAutoConfiguration
@EnableConfigurationProperties
@EnableTransactionManagement//TODO remove this line if not needed
public class Application extends SpringBootServletInitializer{

private static Class<Application> applicationClass= Application.class;
public static void main(String[] args) {
    SpringApplication.run(applicationClass, args);
}

@Override
protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder builder) {
    return builder.sources(applicationClass);
}
}

I was using @ControllerAdvice to handle global exception handling in spring boot starter web and I got such a weird problem.

As I followed the guide from spring official doc, https://spring.io/blog/2013/11/01/exception-handling-in-spring-mvc , to handling exceptions globally, just add a handler class with @ControllerAdivce annotated. But, when I test it, the exception handling method is not invoked when a RunTimeException is thrown.

Here is My code:

@ControllerAdvice
public class GlobalDefaultExceptionHandler {

@ExceptionHandler(value = RuntimeException.class)
@ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST)
public RestEntity handleException(HttpServletRequest req, RuntimeException ex) {
    RestEntity restEntity=new RestEntity();
    Message message=new Message();
    message.setCode(1000);
    message.setMessage("Something wrong with the server");
    restEntity.setMessage(message);
    return restEntity;
}
}

And I have methods in other controllers annotated with @ExceptionHandler to handle specific exceptions in each Controller, while leave unresolved exceptions to the GlobalDefaultExceptionHandler .

It turns out that it doesn't work. Am I missing something here??

And, for now, as a workaround , I just add @RestControoler on the GlobalDefaultExceptionHandler and it just work fine. I don't why...

Anyone can help?

Answer 1

I actually had to remove @EnableWebMvc from my main application file.

Here the working configuration for me:

@SpringBootApplication
@ComponentScan(basePackages = {
....
})
public class Application extends SpringBootServletInitializer { ... }

and the ControllerAdvice:

@ControllerAdvice
public class ErrorHandlingController { ... }