Spring Boot Rest Controller how to return different HTTP status codes?

Question

I am using Spring Boot for a simple REST API and would like to return a correct HTTP statuscode if something fails.

@RequestMapping(value="/rawdata/", method = RequestMethod.PUT)
@ResponseBody
@ResponseStatus( HttpStatus.OK )
public RestModel create(@RequestBody String data) {
    // code ommitted..
    // how do i return a correct status code if something fails?
}

Being new to Spring and Spring Boot, the basic question is how do i return different status codes when something is ok or fails?

informatik01 · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-21 09:27:29Z

176

There are several options you can use. Quite good way is to use exceptions and class for handling called @ControllerAdvice:

@ControllerAdvice
class GlobalControllerExceptionHandler {
    @ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.CONFLICT)  // 409
    @ExceptionHandler(DataIntegrityViolationException.class)
    public void handleConflict() {
        // Nothing to do
    }
}

Also you can pass HttpServletResponse to controller method and just set response code:

public RestModel create(@RequestBody String data, HttpServletResponse response) {
    // response committed...
    response.setStatus(HttpServletResponse.SC_ACCEPTED);
}

Please refer to the this great blog post for details: Exception Handling in Spring MVC

NOTE

In Spring MVC using @ResponseBody annotation is redundant - it's already included in @RestController annotation.

edited Nov 21, 2019 at 9:27

informatik01

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answered Jun 18, 2014 at 18:31

Jakub Kubrynski

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4 Comments

Anearion Over a year ago

Just as comment, i did a test 15 minutes ago, and a '@RestController' without the '@ResponseBody' annotation over his method placed the string returned not inside the body but as ForwardedURL. I'm pretty noob with spring/springboot my self so can't point out why

yoliho Over a year ago

@Anearion There's a typo in the answer -- we actually need '@RestControllerAdvice', not '@RestController'.

Jakub Kubrynski Over a year ago

It's not a typo. This part is related to the question and annotations on a controller

Igor Over a year ago

Note, that javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse seems to not have all the StatusCodes that org.springframework.http.HttpStatus does. So you can use HttpStatus.UNPROCESSABLE_ENTITY.value() to pass the int-value into response.setStatus. Also this perfectly works for error-handling using @ExceptionHandler.

Srdjan Pazin · Accepted Answer · 2024-03-10 19:28:33Z

98

One of the ways to do this is to use ResponseEntity as a return object:

@RequestMapping(value="/rawdata/", method = RequestMethod.PUT)
public ResponseEntity<?> create(@RequestBody String data) {
    if(everything_fine) {
        return new ResponseEntity<>(RestModel, HttpStatus.OK);
    } else {
        return new ResponseEntity<>(null, HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
    }
}

edited Mar 10, 2024 at 19:28

Srdjan Pazin

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answered Jan 5, 2018 at 1:13

Ankit Basarkar

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1 Comment

Kong Over a year ago

No need to use the null in later versions of Spring: new ResponseEntity<>(HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND)

Continuity8 · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-18 01:40:25Z

61

A nice way is to use Spring's ResponseStatusException

Rather than returning a ResponseEntityor similar you simply throw the ResponseStatusException from the controller with an HttpStatus and cause, for example:

throw new ResponseStatusException(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST, "Cause description here");

This results in a response to the client containing the HTTP status:

{
  "timestamp": "2020-07-09T04:43:04.695+0000",
  "status": 400,
  "error": "Bad Request",
  "message": "Cause description here",
  "path": "/test-api/v1/search"
}

Note: HttpStatus provides many different status codes for your convenience.

edited Mar 18, 2021 at 1:40

answered Jul 9, 2020 at 21:39

Continuity8

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6 Comments

Alecz Over a year ago

Simple, clean and consumable by a REST client.

Mahdi Over a year ago

This is not useful when you don't have a genuine exception: for example when you want to do a redirection

dbaltor Over a year ago

I'm afraid this approach is not so clean as it might be due to the way the framework works. The message is not included in the response body by default unless you configure a property called erver.error.include-message=always. See this answer: stackoverflow.com/a/62860392/7066647

Jon Over a year ago

This is only simple and clean if you don't really care what the response body will be.

Rohde Fischer Over a year ago

I'm inclined to disagree with this being nice. This will IMO only be nice if the error isn't a domain error. Domain errors should not be exceptions (exceptions are application errors, exceptional cases, domain rules are not exceptions - they are rules!). The response entity is much cleaner especially in conjunction with an Either monad, where one can actually treat domain errors as an integral part of ones application (as they should be)

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Vedant Goenka · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-05 16:20:11Z

20

In case you want to return a custom defined status code, you can use the ResponseEntity as here:

@RequestMapping(value="/rawdata/", method = RequestMethod.PUT)
public ResponseEntity<?> create(@RequestBody String data) {
    int customHttpStatusValue = 499;
    Foo foo = bar();
    return ResponseEntity.status(customHttpStatusValue).body(foo);
}

The CustomHttpStatusValue could be any integer within or outside of standard HTTP Status Codes.

answered Feb 5, 2020 at 16:20

Vedant Goenka

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2 Comments

v.ladynev Over a year ago

I like this fluent API approach.

BugsForBreakfast Over a year ago

I like this approach, but how can you set custom message of the code? like for example code 999 "my custom message", like when you get code 500 "internal server error"

Rodrigo Hernandez · Accepted Answer · 2018-02-02 21:51:51Z

6

Try this code:

@RequestMapping(value = "/validate", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/json")
public ResponseEntity<ErrorBean> validateUser(@QueryParam("jsonInput") final String jsonInput) {
    int numberHTTPDesired = 400;
    ErrorBean responseBean = new ErrorBean();
    responseBean.setError("ERROR");
    responseBean.setMensaje("Error in validation!");

    return new ResponseEntity<ErrorBean>(responseBean, HttpStatus.valueOf(numberHTTPDesired));
}

answered Feb 2, 2018 at 21:51

Rodrigo Hernandez

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2 Comments

ZF007 Over a year ago

As this is a rather old question so you should add package and version info to which you refer.

Brent Bradburn Over a year ago

Can you include an example implementation of ErrorBean?

Anmol Jain · Accepted Answer · 2022-08-22 16:25:27Z

3

I think the easiest way is to make return type of your method as

ResponseEntity<WHATEVER YOU WANT TO RETURN>

and for sending any status code, just add return statement as

return ResponseEntity.status(HTTP STATUS).build();

For example, if you want to return a list of books,

public ResponseEntity<List<books>> getBooks(){

  List<books> list = this.bookService.getAllBooks();
  
  if(list.size() <= 0)
     return ResponseEntity.status(HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND).build();
  else
     return ResponseEntity.of(Optional.of(list));

}

answered Aug 22, 2022 at 16:25

Anmol Jain

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Comments

Manju D · Accepted Answer · 2020-08-20 15:33:11Z

2

There are different ways to return status code, 1 : RestController class should extends BaseRest class, in BaseRest class we can handle exception and return expected error codes. for example :

@RestController
@RequestMapping
class RestController extends BaseRest{

}

@ControllerAdvice
public class BaseRest {
@ExceptionHandler({Exception.class,...})
    @ResponseStatus(value=HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR)
    public ErrorModel genericError(HttpServletRequest request, 
            HttpServletResponse response, Exception exception) {
        
        ErrorModel error = new ErrorModel();
        resource.addError("error code", exception.getLocalizedMessage());
        return error;
    }

edited Aug 20, 2020 at 15:33

answered Aug 20, 2020 at 15:20

Manju D

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