@ResponseStatus and @ResponseBody not working with @ExceptionHandler

Question

I tried to implement a @ControllerAdvice to globally handle some general exceptions related to my web application. I wanted to send a wrapped JSON response with response status set accordingly. Here is a code sample.

@ControllerAdvice
public class GlobalErrorHandler {

    @ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST)
    @ExceptionHandler(Exception.class)
    @ResponseBody
    public Response handleAllErrors() {
        Response wrapped = new Response(HttpServletResponse.SC_BAD_REQUEST, "error");
        wrapped.setMessage("Could not retrieve data");
        return wrapped;
    }
}

Response is a POJO used to wrap the response. The problem is, despite the @ResponseStatus annotation, the response always has status code 500 (Internal Server Error) with the default error page showing the stack trace. Even the @ResponseBody seems not to work. But the documentation states that I could send a JSON response on an @ExceptionHandler method. I don't understand what I'm doing wrong in here.

I'm using Spring 3.2.8 release framework and Gson is used for message conversion, if that matters.

Any help would be gladly appreciated.

Answer 1

Found the issue. It was because all the getters and setters of the Response POJO were not defined.