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Simplify Error Handling with Global Exception Management in Spring Boot
In real-world projects, it is crucial to handle errors correctly and provide meaningful error messages to clients. Previously, we looked at how to handle exceptions using custom exception handling, which involved using try-catch blocks and throwing exceptions in every class. However, this approach can lead to a significant amount of boilerplate code.
Today, we’ll explore how to reduce that code overhead and handle exceptions globally using Spring Boot’s built-in exception handling capabilities. This approach is suitable when you have common types of exceptions being thrown across multiple controllers and services.
Prerequisites:
- Understanding of Spring Boot
- Knowledge of creating REST APIs
How Spring Boot Simplifies Error Responses
Spring already provides built-in support for error handling, allowing us to move away from basic Java try-catch-finally constructs. This is achieved through the use of annotations for exception handling.
The key annotations we’ll use are:
- @RestControllerAdvice — Used to handle exceptions globally.
- @ExceptionHandler — Maps exceptions to handlers.
- @ResponseStatus…