how to handle url that are not mapped in spring

Question

My dispatcher servlet mapping

  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
      <param-value>/WEB-INF/springconfig/dispatcher-servlet.xml</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
  </servlet>
  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.html</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>

And the controller has handler like

@RequestMapping("moduleone")
public class ApplicationController {    

    @RequestMapping(value="Login.html",method=RequestMethod.GET)
    public ModelAndView showLoginPage(){

        ModelAndView mv=new ModelAndView("../moduleone/Login");
        mv.addObject("loginForm", new LoginForm());
        return mv;

    }
    @RequestMapping(value="Home.html", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public  ModelAndView showHome(HttpServletRequest request)  {
        ModelAndView mv=new ModelAndView("Home");       
        mv.addObject("customerName",appCon.getFirstName() );
        return mv;  
    }   

}

Is it possible to handler request that are not mapped in controller like

  http://localhost:8090/Project/moduleone/invalidpage.html

  http://localhost:8090/Project/moduleone/invalidurl/invalidpage

I have tried @RequestMapping(value="*",method=RequestMethod.GET) but doest work

Answer 1

As 404 (page not found) actually produces an exception on web container level, containers usually provide an exception handling mechanism, thus you can try exception (or so called error) handling, as shown below;

First create a controller

@Controller
public class PageNotFoundErrorController {

    @RequestMapping(value="/pageNotFound.html")
    public String handlePageNotFound() {
            // do something
        return "pageNotFound";
    }
}

and configure web.xml in order to map the error to the controller written above;

<error-page>
    <error-code>404</error-code>
    <location>/pageNotFound.html</location>
</error-page>

you can also extend it by simply adding 403, 500 and other error-codes to web.xml and mapping them to any controller.

What is even more fascinating is that you can also map any exception (even the ones created by your code); here you can find a nice example about it http://www.mkyong.com/spring-mvc/spring-mvc-exception-handling-example/

Answer 2

I try the code block and if change your scenario a bit i can handle it.

 //This one is OK
 http://localhost:8090/Project/moduleone/invalidpage.html
 //add invalid.html not a folder it should be file
 http://localhost:8090/Project/moduleone/invalidurl/invalidpage.html

HomeController.java

@RequestMapping(value = {"*/*.html","*.html"}, method = RequestMethod.GET)
public String test(HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException {
    return new String("home");
}

dispatcher-servlet.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.4" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
    <display-name>TestSpringMVC</display-name>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextClass</param-name>
        <param-value>
            org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext
        </param-value>
    </context-param>
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>

    <servlet>
    <servlet-name>SpringDispatcher</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
      <param-value>/WEB-INF/springconfig/dispatcher-servlet.xml</param-value>
    </init-param>
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
  </servlet>
  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>SpringDispatcher</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.html</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>

    <session-config>
        <session-timeout>30</session-timeout>
    </session-config>
</web-app>

• I can handle both request with this way.
• I think you should define an exception page for your second scenario.
• Also you can read this issue