Why Spring MVC does not allow to expose Model or BindingResult to an @ExceptionHandler?

Question

Situation

I\'m trying to group the code that logs the exceptions and render a nice view in a few methods. At the moment the logic is sometime in the @RequestHand

Answer 1

As stated before you can raise an exception wrapping a binding result object in some method of your controller:

    if (bindingResult.hasErrors()) {
        logBindingErrors(bindingResult);
        //return "users/create";
        // Exception handling happens later in this controller
        throw new BindingErrorsException("MVC binding errors", userForm, bindingResult);
    }

With your exception defined as illustrated here:

public class BindingErrorsException extends RuntimeException {
    private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(BindingErrorsException.class); 
    private static final long serialVersionUID = -7882202987868263849L;

    private final UserForm userForm;
    private final BindingResult bindingResult;

    public BindingErrorsException(
        final String message, 
        final UserForm userForm, 
        final BindingResult bindingResult
    ) {
        super(message);
        this.userForm = userForm;
        this.bindingResult = bindingResult;

        log.error(getLocalizedMessage());
    }

    public UserForm getUserForm() {
        return userForm;
    }

    public BindingResult getBindingResult() {
        return bindingResult;
    }
}

Next you just have to extract the required information from the raised then caught exception. Here assuming you have a suitable exception handler defined on your controller. It might be in a controller advice instead or even elewhere. See the Spring documentation for suitable and appropriate locations.

@ExceptionHandler(BindingErrorsException.class)
public ModelAndView bindingErrors(
    final HttpServletResponse resp, 
    final Exception ex
) {
    if(ex instanceof BindingErrorsException) {
        final BindingErrorsException bex = (BindingErrorsException) ex;
        final ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("users/create", bex.getBindingResult().getModel());
        mav.addObject("user", bex.getUserForm());
        return mav;
    } else {
        final ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("users/create");
        return mav;            
    }
}