Grails Goodness: Exception Methods in Controllers

Since Grails 2.3 we can define exception methods in our controllers to handle exceptions raised by code invoked in the action methods of the controllers. Normally we would write a try/catch statement to handle an exception or let it continue up the stack until a 500 error page is shown. But with exception methods we can write code to handle exceptions in a controller without a try/catch statement. An exception method should define the type of exception it handles as the method argument. We can have multiple exception methods for different exception types. Also subclasses of a controller will use the exception methods if applicable.

In the following controller we have a couple of action methods: index and show. And we have two exception methods: connectException andnotFoundException. The connectException method has a single argument of type ConnectException. This means that any code in the controller that will raise a ConnectException will be handled by this method. And any ResourceNotFoundException thrown in the controller will be handled by the notFoundException method, because the argument type is ResourceNotFoundException.

package com.mrhaki.grails

class SampleController {

    /**
     * Service with methods that are invoked
     * from the controller action methods.
     */ 
    ExternalService externalService

    //--------------------------------------------
    // Action methods:
    //--------------------------------------------

    /** Index action method */
    def index() { 

        // These method calls could throw a ConnectException.
        // If the ConnectException occurs then the 
        // connectException(ConnectException) method is
        // invoked and that method will handle the 
        // request further.
        final all = externalService.all(params)
        final total = externalService.count()
        
        [items: all, totalCount: total]
    }

    /** Show action method */
    def show(final Long id) {

        // This method can throw a ConnectException
        // or ResourceNotFoundException. 
        // If the ResourceNotFoundException is thrown
        // the request is further handled by 
        // the notFoundException(ResourceNotFoundException)
        // method.
        final item = externalService.get(id)
        [item: item]
    }


    //--------------------------------------------
    // Exception methods:
    //--------------------------------------------

    /**
     * If any method in this controller invokes code that
     * will throw a ConnectException then this method
     * is invoked.
     */
    def connectException(final ConnectException exception) {
        logException exception
        render view: 'error', model: [exception: exception]
    }

    /**
     * If any method in this controller invokes code that
     * will throw a ResourceNotFoundException then this method
     * is invoked.
     */
    def notFoundException(final ResourceNotFoundException exception) {
        logException exception
        render view: 'notFound',  model: [id: params.id, exception: exception]        
    }


    /** Log exception */
    private void logException(final Exception exception) {
        log.error "Exception occurred. ${exception?.message}", exception
    }

}