Spring Feign client call enters exception block when it should stay in try block - spring

Question

Need some small help about Spring Feign client. So here is the situation,
I have 2 Spring boot services. Let’s say Service A and Service B. I have configured my Service A with Feign client through which I call the Service B method.
So here is the code for my Service A,
My FeignCleint config interface,
#FeignClient(name = "FeignClient", url = "http://localhost:8081/ServiceB/hello")
public interface FeignApi {
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
ResponseEntity<?> hello();
}
And my rest controller that uses above feign config to call the Service B method,
#RestController
public class ApiController {
#Autowired
private FeignApi feignApi;
#RequestMapping(value = "/callServiceB")
public ResponseEntity<?> companyInfo() {
ResponseEntity<?> response = new ResponseEntity("OK Response", HttpStatus.OK);
try {
response = feignApi.hello();
// Code for some other things related to application.
return response;
} catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println("Service A Exception block reached.");
return new ResponseEntity(ex.getMessage(), HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST);
}
}
}
below is my controller for Service B,
#RestController
public class MyController {
#GetMapping("/hello")
public String hello() throws Exception {
if (true) {
throw new Exception("Service B Exception...");
}
return "Hello World";
}
}
And my Controller advice to handle the exception that I am manually throwing,
#ControllerAdvice
public class MyControllerAdvice {
#ExceptionHandler
#ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR)
public ResponseEntity<?> handleException(Exception exception, Model model) {
return new ResponseEntity<>("Caused due to : " + exception.getMessage(), HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
}
}
Now my flow is like below,
As you can see, I am calling service B from service A using feign client. My service B is throwing an exception manually which I am catching using the controller advice and sending the exception details as an ResponseEntity back to the calling service A. So that Service A can process the details and move forward based on that.
The problem is when I hit the call from Service A using
http://localhost:8080/feign/callServiceB
The service B fails as expected. Now what I expect is that the Service A should receive the response back in form of the ResponseEntity. But what really happens is that the flow enters the exception block instead of staying in the try block. I can see this line printed,
"Service A Exception block reached."
This is what I don't understand. If I have managed the service B exception using controller advice and sent back the response to service A in form of ResponseEntity, then how come the flow of service A enters catch block. I expect it to stay in try block only as I want to process further based on the data.
Any idea, how can I get around this thing? Or is this how it will behave even when I am using controller advice to manage exceptions? What should be the expected behavior in this case?
Please advice.

Answer 1

By default Feign throws FeignException for any error situation.
Make use of fallback mechanism to handle failures.
#FeignClient(name = "FeignClient", url = "http://localhost:8081/ServiceB/hello", fallback= FeignApiFallback.class)
public interface FeignApi {
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
ResponseEntity<?> hello();
}
#Component
class FeignApiFallback implements FeignApi {
#Override
public ResponseEntity<?> hello() {
//do more logic here
return ResponseEntity.ok().build();
}
}
make sure you add below property to wrap methods in hystrix commands in recent releases
feign.hystrix.enabled=true

Answer 2

Any status other than 200, feign client will consider it as an exception and you are setting HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR in your controller advice.
You can use custom ErrorDecoder
refer https://github.com/OpenFeign/feign/wiki/Custom-error-handling