HOWTO handle 404 exceptions globally using Spring MVC configured using Java based Annotations

Question

I am building a Spring 4 MVC app. And it is completely configured using Java Annotations. There is no web.xml. The app is configured by using instance of

Answer 1

I can't comment on the above post by @Ysak (reputation<50), however I can confirm that this method does work with the setup described by the OP.

I will add that from another guide I also had the DefaultServletHandling configured in my WebConfig to fix a separate issue, as below:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@ComponentScan("com.acme.tat.controllers")
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter implements ApplicationContextAware {
...
@Override
public void configureDefaultServletHandling(DefaultServletHandlerConfigurer configurer) {
        configurer.enable();
}

}

With this set to enable, there is no Exception thrown. Once I removed this line and set up manual resourceHandlers everything worked as expected.

It took me around 2.5 hours to set up 404 redirecting because of this simple one line method.