Spring Boot HTTP status without throwing exceptions

Question

I want to return HTTP status other than 200 without using the @ExceptionHandler annotation.

The reason for this is that not every call to my application, which results in a status which is not OK should throw an exception, at least not in my opinion.

As an example, if a user is trying to log into the system, but provides an inaccurate password, I see no reason to throw an exception over this just in order to be able to return a 401 status. Instead, I would like to be able to return the status from within a "regular" method.

The reason behind this is that throwing unnecessary exceptions both clutters my log files, and "uses" my log aggregator (Rollbar/Sentry) monthly allowance.

I've tried annotating methods with @ResponseStatus and @ResponseBody, but it didn't work.

I looked around for blog posts or other articles on the issue but couldn't find anything.

Any idea if this is possible?

Answer 1

You can use RessponseEntity. Replace the /*STATUS CODE*/ with whatever you want:

@GetMapping("/url")
@ResponseBody
public ResponseEntity<?> handlerMethod(/*parameters*/) {
    // ...
    return ResponseEntity.status(/*STATUS CODE*/).body(...);
}