Spring @ExceptionHandler does not work with @ResponseBody

Question

I try to configure a spring exception handler for a rest controller that is able to render a map to both xml and json based on the incoming accept header. It throws a 500 se

Answer 1

The following could be a workaround if you are using message converters to marshall error objects as the response content

@ExceptionHandler(IllegalArgumentException.class)
public String handleException(final Exception e, final HttpServletRequest request)
{
    final Map map = new HashMap();
    map.put("errorCode", 1234);
    map.put("errorMessage", "Some error message");
    request.setAttribute("error", map);
    return "forward:/book/errors"; //forward to url for generic errors
}

//set the response status and return the error object to be marshalled
@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
@RequestMapping(value = {"/book/errors"}, method = {RequestMethod.POST, RequestMethod.GET})
public @ResponseBody Map showError(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response){

    Map map = new HashMap();
    if(request.getAttribute("error") != null)
        map = (Map) request.getAttribute("error");

    response.setStatus(Integer.parseInt(map.get("errorCode").toString()));

    return map;
}