@ControllerAdvice

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

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

At startup, RequestMappingHandlerMapping and ExceptionHandlerExceptionResolver detect Advice-equipped controller beans and apply them at runtime. Global methods marked with the @ExceptionHandler annotation from @ControllerAdvice are applied after local ones from @Controller. Conversely, global methods with @ModelAttribute and @InitBinder annotations are applied before local ones.

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

// Target all controllers annotated with @RestController
@ControllerAdvice(annotations = RestController.class)
public class ExampleAdvice1 {}
// Target all controllers in specific packages
@ControllerAdvice("org.example.controllers")
public class ExampleAdvice2 {}
// Target all controllers assigned 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 in specific packages
@ControllerAdvice("org.example.controllers")
class ExampleAdvice2
// Target all controllers assigned to specific classes
@ControllerAdvice(assignableTypes = [ControllerInterface::class, AbstractController::class])
class ExampleAdvice3

The selectors in the previous example are evaluated at run time and can negatively impact performance if used extensively. For more information, see the annotation javadoc @ControllerAdvice.