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Basically, using Spring MVC, I'm trying to create a router controller that will take any URL that hasn't already been handled by another controller and route it to its respective resource or forward a search request if no resource could be found. Using @RequestMapping(value="/{qry}", method = RequestMethod.GET) was successful in grabbing requests that weren't grabbed already by my other controllers (this seems to work by checking the most specific mappings first) and then I could do whatever forwarding I needed. However, as soon as I put a "/" in the request, the mapping breaks and returns a 404.

So in other words, "/some-long-path-or-something" maps correctly to this catch-all controller, but "/some/other/path" (which does not map to any other controller) is not caught by my catch-all.

How can this be implemented? I've read a few things about interceptors and default handlers, but with no luck in finding a solution.

Thanks for any suggestions!

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
5

Out-of-the-box, Spring automatically registers a DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping bean, which matches requests to controllers using the annotations. Its default behaviour is fine in most situations.

If you declare your own DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping in the context, then it will override the default one, and will allow you to set its defaultHandler property, which will be used when none of the explicit handlers match. Just inject the "catch-all" controller into that property, and Bob's Your Uncle.

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2 Comments

Using this approach, and assuming I've implemented the config changes successfully, how should my controller change its requestmapping to catch the entire request path?
@jerluc: It should just have a single @RequestMapping-annotated method, with no path.
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Why not just catch the 404s and handle accordingly? If I'm not mistaken, I think that's what you are trying to accomplish.

You could place this in your web.xml to handle the 404:

<error-page>
    <error-code>404</error-code>
    <location>/yourHandlerPage</location>
</error-page>

Am I missing something here?

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3 Comments

I was thinking about using this approach, however would this create a redirect or a forward? Also, I'm assuming the original request information is sent to the error page somehow, right?
I haven't test this, but based on one documentation I read, it seems like the request is forwarded, not redirected, which is what you want: An error-page element defines a resource to handle errors of a specific type. Each error-page element contains an error-code element and a location element. The error-code defines the HTTP error code the element handles. The location element defines the path to forward the request to. The location can be any resource reachable by the container, including a static file within a context, a remote HTTP resource, or another servlet within the container.
Thank you, this could be a good back-up in case I can't implement my own mvc exception handler

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