Problems for Spring MVC and Spring WebFlux

Problem Spring Web is a set of libraries that makes it easy to produce application/problem+json responses from a Spring application. It fills a niche, in that it connects the Problem library and either Spring Web MVC's exception handling or Spring WebFlux's exception handling so that they work seamlessly together, while requiring minimal additional developer effort. In doing so, it aims to perform a small but repetitive task — once and for all.

The way this library works is based on what we call advice traits. An advice trait is a small, reusable @ExceptionHandler implemented as a default method placed in a single method interface. Those advice traits can be combined freely and don't require to use a common base class for your @ControllerAdvice.

🔎 Please check out Baeldung: A Guide to the Problem Spring Web Library for a detailed introduction!

Features

• lets you choose traits à la carte
• favors composition over inheritance
• ~20 useful advice traits built in
• Spring MVC and Spring WebFlux support
• Spring Security support
• customizable processing

Dependencies

• Java 17
• Any build tool using Maven Central, or direct download
• Servlet Container for problem-spring-web or
• Reactive, non-blocking runtime for problem-spring-webflux
• Spring 6 (or Spring Boot 3) users may use version >= 0.28.0
• Spring 5 (or Spring Boot 2) users may use version 0.27.0
• Spring 4 (or Spring Boot 1.5) users may use version 0.23.0
• Spring Security 5 (optional)
• Failsafe 2.3.3 (optional)

Installation and Configuration

• Spring Web MVC
• Spring WebFlux

Customization

The problem handling process provided by AdviceTrait is built in a way that allows for customization whenever the need arises. All of the following aspects (and more) can be customized by implementing the appropriate advice trait interface:

Aspect	Method(s)	Default
Creation	AdviceTrait.create(..)
Logging	AdviceTrait.log(..)	4xx as WARN, 5xx as ERROR including stack trace
Content Negotiation	AdviceTrait.negotiate(..)	application/json, application/*+json, application/problem+json and application/x.problem+json
Fallback	AdviceTrait.fallback(..)	application/problem+json
Post-Processing	AdviceTrait.process(..)	n/a

The following example customizes the MissingServletRequestParameterAdviceTrait by adding a parameter extension field to the Problem:

@ControllerAdvice
public class MissingRequestParameterExceptionHandler implements MissingServletRequestParameterAdviceTrait {
    @Override
    public ProblemBuilder prepare(Throwable throwable, StatusType status, URI type) {
        var exception = (MissingServletRequestParameterException) throwable;
        return Problem.builder()
                      .withTitle(status.getReasonPhrase())
                      .withStatus(status)
                      .withDetail(exception.getMessage())
                      .with("parameter", exception.getParameterName());
    }
}

Usage

Assuming there is a controller like this:

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/products")
class ProductsResource {

    @RequestMapping(method = GET, value = "/{productId}", produces = APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
    public Product getProduct(String productId) {
        // TODO implement
        return null;
    }

    @RequestMapping(method = PUT, value = "/{productId}", consumes = APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
    public Product updateProduct(String productId, Product product) {
        // TODO implement
        throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
    }

}

The following HTTP requests will produce the corresponding response respectively:

GET /products/123 HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/xml

HTTP/1.1 406 Not Acceptable
Content-Type: application/problem+json

{
  "title": "Not Acceptable",
  "status": 406,
  "detail": "Could not find acceptable representation"
}

POST /products/123 HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json

{}

HTTP/1.1 405 Method Not Allowed
Allow: GET
Content-Type: application/problem+json

{
  "title": "Method Not Allowed",
  "status": 405,
  "detail": "POST not supported"
}

Stack traces and causal chains

Before you continue, please read the section about Stack traces and causal chains in zalando/problem.

In case you want to enable stack traces, please configure your ProblemModule as follows:

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper()
    .registerModule(new ProblemModule().withStackTraces());

Causal chains of problems are disabled by default, but can be overridden if desired:

@ControllerAdvice
class ExceptionHandling implements ProblemHandling {

    @Override
    public boolean isCausalChainsEnabled() {
        return true;
    }

}

Note Since you have full access to the application context at that point, you can externalize the configuration to your application.yml and even decide to reuse Spring's server.error.include-stacktrace property.

Enabling both features, causal chains and stacktraces, will yield:

{
  "title": "Internal Server Error",
  "status": 500,
  "detail": "Illegal State",
  "stacktrace": [
    "org.example.ExampleRestController.newIllegalState(ExampleRestController.java:96)",
    "org.example.ExampleRestController.nestedThrowable(ExampleRestController.java:91)"
  ],
  "cause": {
    "title": "Internal Server Error",
    "status": 500,
    "detail": "Illegal Argument",
    "stacktrace": [
      "org.example.ExampleRestController.newIllegalArgument(ExampleRestController.java:100)",
      "org.example.ExampleRestController.nestedThrowable(ExampleRestController.java:88)"
    ],
    "cause": {
      "title": "Internal Server Error",
      "status": 500,
      "detail": "Null Pointer",
      "stacktrace": [
        "org.example.ExampleRestController.newNullPointer(ExampleRestController.java:104)",
        "org.example.ExampleRestController.nestedThrowable(ExampleRestController.java:86)",
        "sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)",
        "sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)",
        "sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)",
        "java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:483)",
        "org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod$1.runReflectiveCall(FrameworkMethod.java:50)",
        "org.junit.internal.runners.model.ReflectiveCallable.run(ReflectiveCallable.java:12)",
        "org.junit.runners.model.FrameworkMethod.invokeExplosively(FrameworkMethod.java:47)",
        "org.junit.internal.runners.statements.InvokeMethod.evaluate(InvokeMethod.java:17)",
        "org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.runLeaf(ParentRunner.java:325)",
        "org.junit.runners.BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.java:78)",
        "org.junit.runners.BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.java:57)",
        "org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$3.run(ParentRunner.java:290)",
        "org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$1.schedule(ParentRunner.java:71)",
        "org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.runChildren(ParentRunner.java:288)",
        "org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.access$000(ParentRunner.java:58)",
        "org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$2.evaluate(ParentRunner.java:268)",
        "org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.run(ParentRunner.java:363)",
        "org.junit.runner.JUnitCore.run(JUnitCore.java:137)",
        "com.intellij.junit4.JUnit4IdeaTestRunner.startRunnerWithArgs(JUnit4IdeaTestRunner.java:117)",
        "com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.JUnitStarter.prepareStreamsAndStart(JUnitStarter.java:234)",
        "com.intellij.rt.execution.junit.JUnitStarter.main(JUnitStarter.java:74)"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Known Issues

Spring allows to restrict the scope of a @ControllerAdvice to a certain subset of controllers:

@ControllerAdvice(assignableTypes = ExampleController.class)
public final class ExceptionHandling implements ProblemHandling

By doing this you'll loose the capability to handle certain types of exceptions namely:

• HttpRequestMethodNotSupportedException
• HttpMediaTypeNotAcceptableException
• HttpMediaTypeNotSupportedException
• NoHandlerFoundException

We inherit this restriction from Spring and therefore recommend to use an unrestricted @ControllerAdvice.

Getting Help

If you have questions, concerns, bug reports, etc., please file an issue in this repository's Issue Tracker.

Getting Involved/Contributing

To contribute, simply make a pull request and add a brief description (1-2 sentences) of your addition or change. For more details, check the contribution guidelines.

Credits and references

• Baeldung: A Guide to the Problem Spring Web Library
• Problem Details for HTTP APIs
• Problem library
• Exception Handling in Spring MVC