Baeldung Pro – NPI EA (cat = Baeldung)
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Baeldung Pro comes with both absolutely No-Ads as well as finally with Dark Mode, for a clean learning experience:

>> Explore a clean Baeldung

Once the early-adopter seats are all used, the price will go up and stay at $33/year.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat = Baeldung)
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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat= Spring Boot)
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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, you can get started over on the documentation page.

And, you can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (cat=Spring)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (tag=Microservices)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

eBook – Guide Spring Cloud – NPI EA (cat=Spring Cloud)
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Let's get started with a Microservice Architecture with Spring Cloud:

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eBook – Mockito – NPI EA (tag = Mockito)
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Mocking is an essential part of unit testing, and the Mockito library makes it easy to write clean and intuitive unit tests for your Java code.

Get started with mocking and improve your application tests using our Mockito guide:

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eBook – Java Concurrency – NPI EA (cat=Java Concurrency)
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Handling concurrency in an application can be a tricky process with many potential pitfalls. A solid grasp of the fundamentals will go a long way to help minimize these issues.

Get started with understanding multi-threaded applications with our Java Concurrency guide:

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eBook – Reactive – NPI EA (cat=Reactive)
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Spring 5 added support for reactive programming with the Spring WebFlux module, which has been improved upon ever since. Get started with the Reactor project basics and reactive programming in Spring Boot:

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eBook – Java Streams – NPI EA (cat=Java Streams)
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Since its introduction in Java 8, the Stream API has become a staple of Java development. The basic operations like iterating, filtering, mapping sequences of elements are deceptively simple to use.

But these can also be overused and fall into some common pitfalls.

To get a better understanding on how Streams work and how to combine them with other language features, check out our guide to Java Streams:

>> Join Pro and download the eBook

eBook – Jackson – NPI EA (cat=Jackson)
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Do JSON right with Jackson

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eBook – HTTP Client – NPI EA (cat=Http Client-Side)
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Get the most out of the Apache HTTP Client

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eBook – Maven – NPI EA (cat = Maven)
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Get Started with Apache Maven:

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eBook – Persistence – NPI EA (cat=Persistence)
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Working on getting your persistence layer right with Spring?

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eBook – RwS – NPI EA (cat=Spring MVC)
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Building a REST API with Spring?

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Course – LS – NPI EA (cat=Jackson)
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Get started with Spring and Spring Boot, through the Learn Spring course:

>> LEARN SPRING
Course – RWSB – NPI EA (cat=REST)
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Explore Spring Boot 3 and Spring 6 in-depth through building a full REST API with the framework:

>> The New “REST With Spring Boot”

Course – LSS – NPI EA (cat=Spring Security)
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Yes, Spring Security can be complex, from the more advanced functionality within the Core to the deep OAuth support in the framework.

I built the security material as two full courses - Core and OAuth, to get practical with these more complex scenarios. We explore when and how to use each feature and code through it on the backing project.

You can explore the course here:

>> Learn Spring Security

Course – All Access – NPI EA (cat= Spring)
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All Access is finally out, with all of my Spring courses. Learn JUnit is out as well, and Learn Maven is coming fast. And, of course, quite a bit more affordable. Finally.

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Course – LSD – NPI EA (tag=Spring Data JPA)
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Spring Data JPA is a great way to handle the complexity of JPA with the powerful simplicity of Spring Boot.

Get started with Spring Data JPA through the guided reference course:

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Partner – LambdaTest – NPI EA (cat=Testing)
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End-to-end testing is a very useful method to make sure that your application works as intended. This highlights issues in the overall functionality of the software, that the unit and integration test stages may miss.

Playwright is an easy-to-use, but powerful tool that automates end-to-end testing, and supports all modern browsers and platforms.

When coupled with LambdaTest (an AI-powered cloud-based test execution platform) it can be further scaled to run the Playwright scripts in parallel across 3000+ browser and device combinations:

>> Automated End-to-End Testing With Playwright

Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI EA (cat= Baeldung)
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Yes, we're now running our Spring Sale. All Courses are 25% off until 26th May, 2025:

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Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI (cat=Baeldung)
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Yes, we're now running our Spring Sale. All Courses are 25% off until 26th May, 2025:

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Course – LSS – NPI (cat=Spring Security)
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If you're working on a Spring Security (and especially an OAuth) implementation, definitely have a look at the Learn Spring Security course:

>> LEARN SPRING SECURITY

1. Overview

In this tutorial, we will learn how to globally handle Spring security exceptions with @ExceptionHandler and @ControllerAdvice. The controller advice is an interceptor that allows us to use the same exception handling across the application.

2. Spring Security Exceptions

Spring security core exceptions such as AuthenticationException and AccessDeniedException are runtime exceptions. Since these exceptions are thrown by the authentication filters behind the DispatcherServlet and before invoking the controller methods, @ControllerAdvice won’t be able to catch these exceptions.

Spring security exceptions can be directly handled by adding custom filters and constructing the response body. To handle these exceptions at a global level via @ExceptionHandler and @ControllerAdvice, we need a custom implementation of AuthenticationEntryPoint. AuthenticationEntryPoint is used to send an HTTP response that requests credentials from a client. Although there are multiple built-in implementations for the security entry point, we need to write a custom implementation for sending a custom response message.

First, let’s look at handling security exceptions globally without using @ExceptionHandler.

3. Without @ExceptionHandler

Spring security exceptions are commenced at the AuthenticationEntryPoint. Let’s write an implementation for AuthenticationEntryPoint which intercepts the security exceptions.

3.1. Configuring AuthenticationEntryPoint

Let’s implement the AuthenticationEntryPoint and override commence() method:

@Component("customAuthenticationEntryPoint")
public class CustomAuthenticationEntryPoint implements AuthenticationEntryPoint {

    @Override
    public void commence(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, AuthenticationException authException) 
      throws IOException, ServletException {

        RestError re = new RestError(HttpStatus.UNAUTHORIZED.toString(), "Authentication failed");
        response.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE);
        response.setStatus(HttpServletResponse.SC_UNAUTHORIZED);
        OutputStream responseStream = response.getOutputStream();
        ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
        mapper.writeValue(responseStream, re);
        responseStream.flush();
    }
}

Here, we’ve used ObjectMapper as a message converter for the response body.

3.2. Configuring SecurityConfig

Next, let’s configure SecurityConfig to intercept paths for authentication. Here we’ll configure ‘/login‘ as the path for the above implementation. Also, we’ll configure the ‘admin’ user with the ‘ADMIN’ role:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
public class CustomSecurityConfig {

    @Autowired
    @Qualifier("customAuthenticationEntryPoint")
    AuthenticationEntryPoint authEntryPoint;

    @Bean
    public UserDetailsService userDetailsService() {
        UserDetails admin = User.withUsername("admin")
            .password("password")
            .roles("ADMIN")
            .build();
        InMemoryUserDetailsManager userDetailsManager = new InMemoryUserDetailsManager();
        userDetailsManager.createUser(admin);
        return userDetailsManager;
    }

   @Bean
   public SecurityFilterChain filterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
      http.authorizeHttpRequests(auth -> auth
            .requestMatchers("/login")
            .authenticated()
            .anyRequest()
            .hasRole("ADMIN"))
            .httpBasic(basic -> basic.authenticationEntryPoint(authEntryPoint))
            .exceptionHandling(Customizer.withDefaults());
      return http.build();
 }
}

3.3. Configure the Rest Controller

Now, let’s write a rest controller listening to this endpoint ‘/login’:

@PostMapping(value = "/login", produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
public ResponseEntity<RestResponse> login() {
    return ResponseEntity.ok(new RestResponse("Success"));
}

3.4. Testing

Finally, let’s test this endpoint with mock tests.

First, let’s write a test case for a successful authentication:

@Test
@WithMockUser(username = "admin", roles = { "ADMIN" })
public void whenUserAccessLogin_shouldSucceed() throws Exception {
    mvc.perform(formLogin("/login").user("username", "admin")
      .password("password", "password")
      .acceptMediaType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON))
      .andExpect(status().isOk());
}

Next, let’s look at a scenario with failed authentication:

@Test
public void whenUserAccessWithWrongCredentialsWithDelegatedEntryPoint_shouldFail() throws Exception {
    RestError re = new RestError(HttpStatus.UNAUTHORIZED.toString(), "Authentication failed");
    mvc.perform(formLogin("/login").user("username", "admin")
      .password("password", "wrong")
      .acceptMediaType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON))
      .andExpect(status().isUnauthorized())
      .andExpect(jsonPath("$.errorMessage", is(re.getErrorMessage())));
}

Now, let’s see how we can achieve the same with @ControllerAdvice and @ExceptionHandler.

4. With @ExceptionHandler

This approach allows us to use exactly the same exception handling techniques but in a cleaner and much better way in the controller advice with methods annotated with @ExceptionHandler.

4.1. Configuring AuthenticationEntryPoint

Similar to the above approach, we’ll implement AuthenticationEntryPoint and then delegate the exception handler to HandlerExceptionResolver:

@Component("delegatedAuthenticationEntryPoint")
public class DelegatedAuthenticationEntryPoint implements AuthenticationEntryPoint {

    @Autowired
    @Qualifier("handlerExceptionResolver")
    private HandlerExceptionResolver resolver;

    @Override
    public void commence(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, AuthenticationException authException) 
      throws IOException, ServletException {
        resolver.resolveException(request, response, null, authException);
    }
}

Here we’ve injected the DefaultHandlerExceptionResolver and delegated the handler to this resolver. This security exception can now be handled with controller advice with an exception handler method.

4.2. Configuring ExceptionHandler

Now, for the main configuration for the exception handler, we’ll extend the ResponseEntityExceptionHandler and annotate this class with @ControllerAdvice:

@ControllerAdvice
public class DefaultExceptionHandler extends ResponseEntityExceptionHandler {

    @ExceptionHandler({ AuthenticationException.class })
    @ResponseBody
    public ResponseEntity<RestError> handleAuthenticationException(Exception ex) {

        RestError re = new RestError(HttpStatus.UNAUTHORIZED.toString(), 
          "Authentication failed at controller advice");
        return ResponseEntity.status(HttpStatus.UNAUTHORIZED).body(re);
    }
}

4.3. Configuring SecurityConfig

Now, let’s write a security configuration for this delegated authentication entry point:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSecurity
public class DelegatedSecurityConfig {

    @Autowired
    @Qualifier("delegatedAuthenticationEntryPoint")
    AuthenticationEntryPoint authEntryPoint;

    @Bean
    public SecurityFilterChain filterChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http.requestMatchers()
            .antMatchers("/login-handler")
            .and()
            .authorizeRequests()
            .anyRequest()
            .hasRole("ADMIN")
            .and()
            .httpBasic()
            .and()
            .exceptionHandling()
            .authenticationEntryPoint(authEntryPoint);
        return http.build();
    }

    @Bean
    public InMemoryUserDetailsManager userDetailsService() {
        UserDetails admin = User.withUsername("admin")
            .password("password")
            .roles("ADMIN")
            .build();
        return new InMemoryUserDetailsManager(admin);
    }
}

For the ‘/login-handler‘ endpoint, we’ve configured the exception handler with the above-implemented DelegatedAuthenticationEntryPoint.

4.4. Configure the Rest Controller

Let’s configure the rest controller for the ‘/login-handler‘ endpoint:

@PostMapping(value = "/login-handler", produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
public ResponseEntity<RestResponse> loginWithExceptionHandler() {
    return ResponseEntity.ok(new RestResponse("Success"));
}

4.5. Tests

Now let’s test this endpoint:

@Test
@WithMockUser(username = "admin", roles = { "ADMIN" })
public void whenUserAccessLogin_shouldSucceed() throws Exception {
    mvc.perform(formLogin("/login-handler").user("username", "admin")
      .password("password", "password")
      .acceptMediaType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON))
      .andExpect(status().isOk());
}

@Test
public void whenUserAccessWithWrongCredentialsWithDelegatedEntryPoint_shouldFail() throws Exception {
    RestError re = new RestError(HttpStatus.UNAUTHORIZED.toString(), "Authentication failed at controller advice");
    mvc.perform(formLogin("/login-handler").user("username", "admin")
      .password("password", "wrong")
      .acceptMediaType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON))
      .andExpect(status().isUnauthorized())
      .andExpect(jsonPath("$.errorMessage", is(re.getErrorMessage())));
}

In the success test, we’ve tested the endpoint with a pre-configured username and password. In the failure test, we’ve validated the response for the status code and error message in the response body.

5. Conclusion

In this article, we’ve learned how to globally handle Spring Security exceptions with @ExceptionHandler. In addition, we’ve created a fully functional example that helps us understand the concepts explained.

The code backing this article is available on GitHub. Once you're logged in as a Baeldung Pro Member, start learning and coding on the project.
Baeldung Pro – NPI EA (cat = Baeldung)
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Baeldung Pro comes with both absolutely No-Ads as well as finally with Dark Mode, for a clean learning experience:

>> Explore a clean Baeldung

Once the early-adopter seats are all used, the price will go up and stay at $33/year.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat = Spring Boot)
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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (cat = Spring)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (tag = Microservices)
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Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

eBook – HTTP Client – NPI EA (cat=HTTP Client-Side)
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The Apache HTTP Client is a very robust library, suitable for both simple and advanced use cases when testing HTTP endpoints. Check out our guide covering basic request and response handling, as well as security, cookies, timeouts, and more:

>> Download the eBook

eBook – Java Concurrency – NPI EA (cat=Java Concurrency)
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Handling concurrency in an application can be a tricky process with many potential pitfalls. A solid grasp of the fundamentals will go a long way to help minimize these issues.

Get started with understanding multi-threaded applications with our Java Concurrency guide:

>> Download the eBook

eBook – Java Streams – NPI EA (cat=Java Streams)
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Since its introduction in Java 8, the Stream API has become a staple of Java development. The basic operations like iterating, filtering, mapping sequences of elements are deceptively simple to use.

But these can also be overused and fall into some common pitfalls.

To get a better understanding on how Streams work and how to combine them with other language features, check out our guide to Java Streams:

>> Join Pro and download the eBook

eBook – Persistence – NPI EA (cat=Persistence)
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Working on getting your persistence layer right with Spring?

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Course – LS – NPI EA (cat=REST)

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Get started with Spring Boot and with core Spring, through the Learn Spring course:

>> CHECK OUT THE COURSE

Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI EA (cat= Baeldung)
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Yes, we're now running our Spring Sale. All Courses are 25% off until 26th May, 2025:

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Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI (All)
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Yes, we're now running our Spring Sale. All Courses are 25% off until 26th May, 2025:

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Course – LSS – NPI (cat=Security/Spring Security)
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I just announced the new Learn Spring Security course, including the full material focused on the new OAuth2 stack in Spring Security:

>> CHECK OUT THE COURSE

Partner – Microsoft – NPI (cat=Spring)
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Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

eBook Jackson – NPI EA – 3 (cat = Jackson)