Controller Advice

See equivalent in the Reactive stack

@ExceptionHandler, @InitBinder, and @ModelAttribute methods apply only to the @Controller class, or class hierarchy, in which they are declared. If, instead, they are declared in an @ControllerAdvice or @RestControllerAdvice class, then they apply to any controller. Moreover, as of 5.3, @ExceptionHandler methods in @ControllerAdvice can be used to handle exceptions from any @Controller or any other handler.

@ControllerAdvice is meta-annotated with @Component and therefore can be registered as a Spring bean through component scanning . @RestControllerAdvice is meta-annotated with @ControllerAdvice and @ResponseBody, and that means @ExceptionHandler methods will have their return value rendered via response body message conversion, rather than via HTML views.

On startup, RequestMappingHandlerMapping and ExceptionHandlerExceptionResolver detect controller advice beans and apply them at runtime. Global @ExceptionHandler methods, from an @ControllerAdvice, are applied after local ones, from the @Controller. By contrast, global @ModelAttribute and @InitBinder methods are applied before local ones.

The @ControllerAdvice annotation has attributes that let you narrow the set of controllers and handlers that they apply to. For example:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

// Target all Controllers annotated with @RestController
@ControllerAdvice(annotations = RestController.class)
public class ExampleAdvice1 {}

// Target all Controllers within specific packages
@ControllerAdvice("org.example.controllers")
public class ExampleAdvice2 {}

// Target all Controllers assignable to specific classes
@ControllerAdvice(assignableTypes = {ControllerInterface.class, AbstractController.class})
public class ExampleAdvice3 {}
// Target all Controllers annotated with @RestController
@ControllerAdvice(annotations = [RestController::class])
class ExampleAdvice1

// Target all Controllers within specific packages
@ControllerAdvice("org.example.controllers")
class ExampleAdvice2

// Target all Controllers assignable to specific classes
@ControllerAdvice(assignableTypes = [ControllerInterface::class, AbstractController::class])
class ExampleAdvice3

The selectors in the preceding example are evaluated at runtime and may negatively impact performance if used extensively. See the @ControllerAdvice javadoc for more details.