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Unexpected 500 Internal Server Error when using Spring Boot REST API with custom error handling

👀 Views: 1270 đŸ’Ŧ Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-22
spring-boot rest error-handling Java

Can someone help me understand Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy... I'm developing a REST API using Spring Boot 2.5.4 and I've implemented a custom error handling mechanism using the `@ControllerAdvice` annotation. However, I'm encountering a 500 Internal Server Error when an exception is thrown, even though I believe my error handling logic should be catching it. Here's a simplified version of my code: ```java @RestController @RequestMapping("/api") public class MyController { @GetMapping("/data/{id}") public ResponseEntity<Data> getData(@PathVariable String id) { if (id.equals("invalid")) { throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid ID"); } // Assume fetchData() retrieves the data successfully Data data = fetchData(id); return ResponseEntity.ok(data); } } @ControllerAdvice public class GlobalExceptionHandler { @ExceptionHandler(IllegalArgumentException.class) public ResponseEntity<String> handleIllegalArgumentException(IllegalArgumentException ex) { return ResponseEntity.status(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST).body(ex.getMessage()); } } ``` When I send a GET request to `/api/data/invalid`, I expect to receive a 400 Bad Request with the message "Invalid ID", but instead, I am getting a 500 Internal Server Error. The logs show the following stack trace: ``` 2023-10-01 12:00:00.000 ERROR 12345 --- [nio-8080-exec-1] o.a.c.c.C.[.[.[/api] : Exception handling failed; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Invalid ID ``` I've checked that my `GlobalExceptionHandler` class is being detected by Spring because I'm getting the correct response for other exceptions, like `NullPointerException`. The application is running with default configurations, and I'm using Jackson for JSON serialization. Could there be something I'm missing regarding how exception handling works in Spring Boot? I'm also curious if there's a better way to structure my error handling to ensure all exceptions are caught properly. Any insights would be appreciated! Could someone point me to the right documentation? My development environment is macOS. I'm working on a microservice that needs to handle this. Is this even possible?