[java] How to manage exceptions thrown in filters in Spring?

I come across this issue myself and I performed the steps below to reuse my ExceptionController that is annotated with @ControllerAdvise for Exceptions thrown in a registered Filter.

There are obviously many ways to handle exception but, in my case, I wanted the exception to be handled by my ExceptionController because I am stubborn and also because I don't want to copy/paste the same code (i.e. I have some processing/logging code in ExceptionController). I would like to return the beautiful JSON response just like the rest of the exceptions thrown not from a Filter.

{
  "status": 400,
  "message": "some exception thrown when executing the request"
}

Anyway, I managed to make use of my ExceptionHandler and I had to do a little bit of extra as shown below in steps:

Steps

1. You have a custom filter that may or may not throw an exception
2. You have a Spring controller that handles exceptions using @ControllerAdvise i.e. MyExceptionController

Sample code

//sample Filter, to be added in web.xml
public MyFilterThatThrowException implements Filter {
   //Spring Controller annotated with @ControllerAdvise which has handlers
   //for exceptions
   private MyExceptionController myExceptionController; 

   @Override
   public void destroy() {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
   }

   @Override
   public void init(FilterConfig arg0) throws ServletException {
       //Manually get an instance of MyExceptionController
       ApplicationContext ctx = WebApplicationContextUtils
                  .getRequiredWebApplicationContext(arg0.getServletContext());

       //MyExceptionHanlder is now accessible because I loaded it manually
       this.myExceptionController = ctx.getBean(MyExceptionController.class); 
   }

   @Override
    public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain)
            throws IOException, ServletException {
        HttpServletRequest req = (HttpServletRequest) request;
        HttpServletResponse res = (HttpServletResponse) response;

        try {
           //code that throws exception
        } catch(Exception ex) {
          //MyObject is whatever the output of the below method
          MyObject errorDTO = myExceptionController.handleMyException(req, ex); 

          //set the response object
          res.setStatus(errorDTO .getStatus());
          res.setContentType("application/json");

          //pass down the actual obj that exception handler normally send
          ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
          PrintWriter out = res.getWriter(); 
          out.print(mapper.writeValueAsString(errorDTO ));
          out.flush();

          return; 
        }

        //proceed normally otherwise
        chain.doFilter(request, response); 
     }
}

And now the sample Spring Controller that handles Exception in normal cases (i.e. exceptions that are not usually thrown in Filter level, the one we want to use for exceptions thrown in a Filter)

//sample SpringController 
@ControllerAdvice
public class ExceptionController extends ResponseEntityExceptionHandler {

    //sample handler
    @ResponseStatus(value = HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST)
    @ExceptionHandler(SQLException.class)
    public @ResponseBody MyObject handleSQLException(HttpServletRequest request,
            Exception ex){
        ErrorDTO response = new ErrorDTO (400, "some exception thrown when "
                + "executing the request."); 
        return response;
    }
    //other handlers
}

Sharing the solution with those who wish to use ExceptionController for Exceptions thrown in a Filter.