Having to use deprecated classes with Spring MVC - spring

Question

Have been trial Spring Web MVC (4.2.5) and have his a number of issues trying to use a DispatcherServlet and
<mvc:annotation-driven />
Have setup a simple #Controller class and wanted to use the POJO to JSON mapping. The docu said that if Jackson was detected on the class path it would be used automatically, however this didn't work for me and I was forced to use the 'deprecated' AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter
<bean name="mappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter" class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter" />
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter" >
<property name="messageConverters" ref="mappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter"/>
</bean>
which then worked fine.
Equally, tried to create a #ControllerAdvice class for handling all exceptions, but only got an #ExceptionHandler method working on the same controller class, and that was only when I added the (again) deprecated AnnotationMethodHandlerExceptionResolver to the context.
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerExceptionResolver" />
Having to instantiate two deprecated classes suggests I am doing something wrong, especially when all the tutorials seem to suggest this should all 'just work', but I cannot see what (and indeed nosing through the Spring source I cannot see how the default and recommended handlers would work anyway)
There are no errors, the annotation simply aren't detected. The fill context xml is
please find the entire context XML below (is very simple)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd">
<mvc:annotation-driven enable-matrix-variables="true"/>
<bean name="mappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter" class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter" />
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter" >
<property name="messageConverters" ref="mappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter"/>
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerExceptionResolver" />
<context:component-scan base-package="com.domain.datastore.dao"/>
<context:component-scan base-package="com.domain.service"/>
<context:component-scan base-package="com.domain.uiapi"/>
</beans>
An example controller is
#RestController("/place/*")
public class PlaceController {
private PlaceService placeService;
#Autowired
public PlaceController(PlaceService placeService) {
this.placeService = placeService;
}
#RequestMapping(path="/{id}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public #ResponseBody Place getPlace(#PathVariable("id") long id, Model model) {
return placeService.getPlace(id);
}
}
and the cross-cutting exception handler is
#ControllerAdvice
public class GlobalExceptionController {
public GlobalExceptionController() {
System.out.println("GlobalExceptionController");
}
#ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND)
#ExceptionHandler(NotFoundException.class)
public ModelAndView handleCustomException(NotFoundException ex) {
return null;
}
}

Answer 1

The issue was that Spring MVC was matching the path in
#RestController("/place/*")
And as such passing the instance of PlaceController around as the handler. The ExceptionHandlerExceptionResolver expects a HandlerMethod and so was unable to process the exception.
As such dropping the path from the class annotation and putting the full path in the method got it all working and I dropped all the deprecated beans.
#RestController
public class PlaceController {
#RequestMapping(path="/place/{id}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public #ResponseBody Place getPlace(#PathVariable("id") long id, Model model)
What I am not sure is if this is a bug. Shouldn't it be possible to put the 'base' path in the RestController annotation and the subpath in the RequestMapping?

Answer 2

As far as I can understand you don't want to use a deprecated class. AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter is indeed Deprecated. As doc suggest you should use RequestMappingHandlerAdapter instead.
See here for the details.
And instead of AnnotationMethodHandlerExceptionResolver you can use ExceptionHandlerExceptionResolver.