How can i preserve the request headers in error response prepared through JAX-RS ( Apache-CXF implementation) ExceptionMapper

Question

I am implementing JAX-RS using apache CXF. I have created an ExceptionMapper to handle bad requests like this:

    public class ClientErrorExceptionMapper implements ExceptionMapper<ClientErrorException> {

    @Override
    public Response toResponse(final ClientErrorException exception) {
        return Response.status(Response.Status.BAD_REQUEST).entity("Invalid request: Invalid URI.").build();

    }

}

I am not sure how this works internally but i suppose that framework would throw an exception in case user is making an invalid request and this handler will prepare an error message to be send back. My problem is that i wish to preserve some custom headers that user sends in the request, so that i send that back with the response. But using this exception mapper, i cant see any option to get the original request headers. I can set any new header in the response, but i wish to preserve the request headers - like i do in a normal request. So is there any way in JAX-RS where i can preserve or efficiently refer to the custom headers in current request ?

Answer 1

What we have resorted to is using a thread local variable to save the RequestContext when the request arrives and then in the ExceptionMapper we can obtain request specific information.

Ugly but it works. I think we have a generic filter in the filter list that catches all requests before dispatch.