What happens if an exception is raised and there are no handler for it in the current block?

New answer (2016-04-20)

Using Spring Boot 1.3.1.RELEASE

New Step 1 - It is easy and less intrusive to add the following properties to the application.properties:

spring.mvc.throw-exception-if-no-handler-found=true spring.resources.add-mappings=false

Much easier than modifying the existing DispatcherServlet instance (as below)! - JO'

If working with a full RESTful Application, it is very important to disable the automatic mapping of static resources since if you are using Spring Boot's default configuration for handling static resources then the resource handler will be handling the request (it's ordered last and mapped to /** which means that it picks up any requests that haven't been handled by any other handler in the application) so the dispatcher servlet doesn't get a chance to throw an exception.

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New Answer (2015-12-04)

Using Spring Boot 1.2.7.RELEASE

New Step 1 - I found a much less intrusive way of setting the "throExceptionIfNoHandlerFound" flag. Replace the DispatcherServlet replacement code below (Step 1) with this in your application initialization class:

@ComponentScan() @EnableAutoConfiguration public class MyApplication extends SpringBootServletInitializer { private static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(MyApplication.class); public static void main(String[] args) { ApplicationContext ctx = SpringApplication.run(MyApplication.class, args); DispatcherServlet dispatcherServlet = (DispatcherServlet)ctx.getBean("dispatcherServlet"); dispatcherServlet.setThrowExceptionIfNoHandlerFound(true); }

In this case, we're setting the flag on the existing DispatcherServlet, which preserves any auto-configuration by the Spring Boot framework.

One more thing I've found - the @EnableWebMvc annotation is deadly to Spring Boot. Yes, that annotation enables things like being able to catch all the controller exceptions as described below, but it also kills a LOT of the helpful auto-configuration that Spring Boot would normally provide. Use that annotation with extreme caution when you use Spring Boot.

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Original Answer:

After a lot more research and following up on the solutions posted here (thanks for the help!) and no small amount of runtime tracing into the Spring code, I finally found a configuration that will handle all Exceptions (not Errors, but read on) including 404s.

Step 1 - tell SpringBoot to stop using MVC for "handler not found" situations. We want Spring to throw an exception instead of returning to the client a view redirect to "/error". To do this, you need to have an entry in one of your configuration classes:

// NEW CODE ABOVE REPLACES THIS! (2015-12-04) @Configuration public class MyAppConfig { @Bean // Magic entry public DispatcherServlet dispatcherServlet() { DispatcherServlet ds = new DispatcherServlet(); ds.setThrowExceptionIfNoHandlerFound(true); return ds; } }

The downside of this is that it replaces the default dispatcher servlet. This hasn't been a problem for us yet, with no side effects or execution problems showing up. If you're going to do anything else with the dispatcher servlet for other reasons, this is the place to do them.

Step 2 - Now that spring boot will throw an exception when no handler is found, that exception can be handled with any others in a unified exception handler:

@EnableWebMvc @ControllerAdvice public class ServiceExceptionHandler extends ResponseEntityExceptionHandler { @ExceptionHandler(Throwable.class) @ResponseBody ResponseEntity