Model population in Spring MVC @ExceptionHandler

Question

Is there a way to let my @ExceptionHandler methods have access to the model attributes populated by the @RequestMapping method that triggered the exception in question?

Or, more specifically for my problem: my models passed to my views have some data populated from @ModelAttribute (such as detailed information on the user account) methods, and I'd like those to be also set in my @ExceptionHandler methods.

For instance, since my error view page uses the same header and menu as my other pages, I want to show the current user name (and other info, such as number of unread messages etc).

I know the @ExceptionHandler exists outside the @Transaction (as it should!), so I obviously can't just (and don't want to) run some queries again. Rather, I'd like to pre-populate the ModelMap or ModelAndView or whatever, and make sure the exception handler gets hold of that - or at least that the model data is made available when rendering the view.

I hope this question makes sense, I'm fairly new to Spring MVC so I may be mixing a few concepts here and there...

Answer 1

The javadoc of ExceptionHandler states the following with regard to the arguments that can be passed to the handler method:

Handler methods which are annotated with this annotation are allowed to have very flexible signatures. They may have arguments of the following types, in arbitrary order:

1. An exception argument: declared as a general Exception or as a more specific exception. This also serves as a mapping hint if the annotation itself does not narrow the exception types through its value().
2. Request and/or response objects (Servlet API or Portlet API). You may choose any specific request/response type, e.g. ServletRequest / HttpServletRequest or PortletRequest / ActionRequest / RenderRequest. Note that in the Portlet case, an explicitly declared action/render argument is also used for mapping specific request types onto a handler method (in case of no other information given that differentiates between action and render requests).
3. Session object (Servlet API or Portlet API): either HttpSession or PortletSession. An argument of this type will enforce the presence of a corresponding session. As a consequence, such an argument will never be null. Note that session access may not be thread-safe, in particular in a Servlet environment: Consider switching the "synchronizeOnSession" flag to "true" if multiple requests are allowed to access a session concurrently.
4. WebRequest or NativeWebRequest. Allows for generic request parameter access as well as request/session attribute access, without ties to the native Servlet/Portlet API.
5. Locale for the current request locale (determined by the most specific locale resolver available, i.e. the configured LocaleResolver in a Servlet environment and the portal locale in a Portlet environment).
6. InputStream / Reader for access to the request's content. This will be the raw InputStream/Reader as exposed by the Servlet/Portlet API.
7. OutputStream / Writer for generating the response's content. This will be the raw OutputStream/Writer as exposed by the Servlet/Portlet API. 
8. Model as an alternative to returning a model map from the handler method. Note that the provided model is not pre-populated with regular model attributes and therefore always empty, as a convenience for preparing the model for an exception-specific view.

So in order to populate the model of the view you will be using to display the error, you'll probably have to go with WebRequest

Answer 2

Thought its possible, but:

http://spring.io/blog/2013/11/01/exception-handling-in-spring-mvc

Important Note: the Model may not be a parameter of any @ExceptionHandler method. Instead, setup a model inside the method using a ModelAndView as shown by handleError() above.

Seems you have to cant pass ModelAndView as in any other controller, so it has to be built once again + fetch possible values from HttpServletRequest.