Chapter 22: Spring Boot Exception Handling | Spring Boot Course

Ramesh Fadatare

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Apr 24, 2025

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In the previous chapter, we built a CRUD REST API for a user management project. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to implement centralized exception handling for your Spring Boot CRUD REST API using @RestControllerAdvice.

Global exception handling adds meaningful error messages, avoids code duplication, and keeps your controllers clean.

This is a continuation of our previous chapter: Build CRUD REST API with Spring Boot, Spring Data JPA, Hibernate, and MySQL.

✅ Why Exception Handling Matters

Without proper exception handling:

• Clients receive cryptic or unstructured error messages
• Stack traces may be exposed to end users (bad for security)
• Your controller methods become cluttered with try-catch

With global handling:

• All exceptions are handled centrally
• Responses are formatted consistently
• Custom error messages and HTTP status codes are returned

Step 1: Create a Standard Error Response

Let’s define a DTO that represents the structure of the error response.

✅ ErrorResponse.java

Create ErrorResponse.java inside net.javaguides.usermanagement.exception

package net.javaguides.usermanagement.exception;

import java.time.LocalDateTime;

public record ErrorResponse(String message, int status, LocalDateTime timestamp) {
    public ErrorResponse(String message, int status) {
        this(message, status, LocalDateTime.now());
    }
}