ControllerAdvice annotation in spring 4 is not working - spring

Question

In spring-mvc.xml:
<beans ...>
<mvc:annotation-driven/>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping" />
<bean class="com.app.controllers.ExceptionController"/>
....
</beans>
In GlobalException.java:
#ControllerAdvice(basePackages = "com.exceptions")
public class GlobalException {
#ExceptionHandler(UserDefinedException.class)
public ModelAndView processCustomException(UserDefinedException ud) {
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("exceptionPage");
mav.addObject("name", ud.getName());
mav.addObject("message", ud.getMessage());
return mav;
}
}
In ExceptionController.java:
public class ExceptionController implements Controller {
#Override
public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest arg0, HttpServletResponse arg1) throws Exception {
throw new UserDefinedException("Custom Exception has occured", "CustomException");
}
}
Ecxception is throwing as com.exceptions.UserDefinedException: Custom Exception has occured. But ExceptionHandler method is not called. Whats wrong is this code. I'm using spring 4.3 version.

Answer 1

enable Spring's component scanning in your spring-mvc.xml by adding this:
<context:component-scan base-package="com.exceptions" />
and remove your obsolete XML configured Spring bean (<bean class="com.app.controllers.ExceptionController"/>)
also annotate your controller classes with #Controller and add a #RequestMapping to your controller methods, e.g. like this:
#Controller
public class ExceptionController {
#RequestMapping(value="/whatever", method=RequestMethod.GET)
public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest arg0, HttpServletResponse arg1) throws Exception {
throw new UserDefinedException("Custom Exception has occured", "CustomException");
}
}
this way, your classes annotated with Spring stereotype annotations (#Component, #Service, #Controller, #Repository) should be found, instantiated and registered as Spring beans by Spring itself at application startup!