Annotation for handling exceptions in specific handler classes and/or handler methods.

Handler methods which are annotated with this annotation are allowed to have very flexible signatures. They may have parameters of the following types, in arbitrary order:

• An exception argument: declared as a general Exception or as a more specific exception. This also serves as a mapping hint if the annotation itself does not narrow the exception types through its value(). You may refer to a top-level exception being propagated or to a nested cause within a wrapper exception. As of 5.3, any cause level is being exposed, whereas previously only an immediate cause was considered.
• Request and/or response objects (typically from the Servlet API). You may choose any specific request/response type, e.g. jakarta.servlet.ServletRequest / jakarta.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest.
• Session object: typically jakarta.servlet.http.HttpSession. An argument of this type will enforce the presence of a corresponding session. As a consequence, such an argument will never be null. Note that session access may not be thread-safe, in particular in a Servlet environment: Consider switching the "synchronizeOnSession" flag to "true" if multiple requests are allowed to access a session concurrently.
• org.springframework.web.context.request.WebRequest or org.springframework.web.context.request.NativeWebRequest. Allows for generic request parameter access as well as request/session attribute access, without ties to the native Servlet API.
• java.util.Locale for the current request locale (determined by the most specific locale resolver available, i.e. the configured org.springframework.web.servlet.LocaleResolver in a Servlet environment).
• java.io.InputStream / java.io.Reader for access to the request's content. This will be the raw InputStream/Reader as exposed by the Servlet API.
• java.io.OutputStream / java.io.Writer for generating the response's content. This will be the raw OutputStream/Writer as exposed by the Servlet API.
• org.springframework.ui.Model as an alternative to returning a model map from the handler method. Note that the provided model is not pre-populated with regular model attributes and therefore always empty, as a convenience for preparing the model for an exception-specific view.

The following return types are supported for handler methods:

• A ModelAndView object (from Servlet MVC).
• A org.springframework.ui.Model object, with the view name implicitly determined through a org.springframework.web.servlet.RequestToViewNameTranslator.
• A java.util.Map object for exposing a model, with the view name implicitly determined through a org.springframework.web.servlet.RequestToViewNameTranslator.
• A org.springframework.web.servlet.View object.
• A String value which is interpreted as view name.
• @ResponseBody annotated methods (Servlet-only) to set the response content. The return value will be converted to the response stream using message converters.
• An HttpEntity<?> or ResponseEntity<?> object (Servlet-only) to set response headers and content. The ResponseEntity body will be converted and written to the response stream using message converters.
• void if the method handles the response itself (by writing the response content directly, declaring an argument of type jakarta.servlet.ServletResponse / jakarta.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse for that purpose) or if the view name is supposed to be implicitly determined through a org.springframework.web.servlet.RequestToViewNameTranslator (not declaring a response argument in the handler method signature).

You may combine the ExceptionHandler annotation with @ResponseStatus for a specific HTTP error status.