Spring Boot catch multiple exceptions and send as error response - spring

Question

I am validating an incoming POST request which will create a database entity after validating the request data. I am trying to gather multiple errors in a single request and respond as error response following JSON API spec:
https://jsonapi.org/examples/#error-objects-multiple-errors
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Content-Type: application/vnd.api+json
{
"errors": [
{
"status": "403",
"source": { "pointer": "/data/attributes/secretPowers" },
"detail": "Editing secret powers is not authorized on Sundays."
},
{
"status": "422",
"source": { "pointer": "/data/attributes/volume" },
"detail": "Volume does not, in fact, go to 11."
},
{
"status": "500",
"source": { "pointer": "/data/attributes/reputation" },
"title": "The backend responded with an error",
"detail": "Reputation service not responding after three requests."
}
]
}
Is it possible to do this by #ControllerAdvice. When Global exception handling is enabled by #ControllerAdvice and throws an exception, the next exception won't be caught.

Answer 1

Not directly, no. Not sure what is your business case/logic, therefore I don't know how you handling these exceptions in service layer, but in general, if you want to pass multiple errors in your #ExceptionHanlder - you could create a custom POJO:
public class MyError {
private String status;
private String source;
private String title;
private String detail;
getters/setters...
}
and then create a custom RuntimeException which would accept list of these POJOs:
public class MyRuntimeException extends RuntimeException {
private final List<MyError> errors;
public MyRuntimeException(List<MyError> errors) {
super();
this.errors = errors;
}
public List<MyError> getErrors() {
return errors;
}
}
And in your service layer you could create list of these POJOs, wrap then in your exception and throw it. Then in #ControllerAdvice you simply catch your exception and call accessor method to iterate against your list of POJOs to construct a payload you want.
Something like:
#ExceptionHandler (MyRuntimeException.class)
#ResponseStatus (BAD_REQUEST)
#ResponseBody
public Map<String, Object> handleMyRuntimeException(MyRuntimeException e) {
return singletonMap("errors", e.getErrors());
}