Expose Spring MVC handled exception as request attribute when no view rendering is required [SPR-11686]

[spring-projects-issues]

Dave Syer opened SPR-11686 and commented

Is there any reason DefaultHandlerExceptionResolver couldn't set "javax.servlet.error.exception" for all the exceptions it handles? Anyone writing an error view is left without some vital information (especially rich when it is a BindException, for instance). Surely we could add it without breaking any existing applications?

---

Affects: 4.0.3

Referenced from: commits 476864f

[spring-projects-issues]

Dave Syer commented

An alternative to changing the exception resolver would be to move the call to

WebUtils.exposeErrorRequestAttributes(request, ex, getServletName());

up a few lines in DispatcherServlet.processHandlerException(...) (currently it is never reached if the DefaultHandlerExceptionResolver resolves the exception.

[spring-projects-issues]

Dave Syer commented

Actually I think I know the answer to the original question: if the "javax.servlet.error.exception" attribute is not null the container will send 500 anyway, defeating the object. Duh.

[spring-projects-issues]

Dave Syer commented

Maybe worth keeping this open - Spring could put the exception in a different request attribute (it probably does this anyway for JSP tag handling?).

[spring-projects-issues]

Rossen Stoyanchev commented

Is there any reason DefaultHandlerExceptionResolver couldn't set "javax.servlet.error.exception" for all the exceptions it handles?
Spring could put the exception in a different request attribute

Yes we could do that. More generally this could be wherever we call response.sendError(int) and there is an exception. The only other place I see is the ResponseStatusExceptionResolver. Perhaps a new method in WebUtils sendError(int status, Throwable ex).

[spring-projects-issues]

Rossen Stoyanchev commented

On a second thought, I've done something a little different, along the lines of Dave's suggestion to add the attribute in the DispatcherServlet. Essentially when an empty ModelAndView is returned there is no way to know what exception was resolved from any handler in a potential Servlet container ERROR dispatch. See commit 476864.

/cc Juergen Hoeller