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Interception

All HandlerMapping implementations support handler interception which is useful when you want to apply functionality across requests. A HandlerInterceptor can implement the following:

  • preHandle(..) — callback before the actual handler is run that returns a boolean. If the method returns true, execution continues; if it returns false, the rest of the execution chain is bypassed and the handler is not called.

  • postHandle(..) — callback after the handler is run.

  • afterCompletion(..) — callback after the complete request has finished.

For @ResponseBody and ResponseEntity controller methods, the response is written and committed within the HandlerAdapter, before postHandle is called. That means it is too late to change the response, such as to add an extra header. You can implement ResponseBodyAdvice and declare it as an Controller Advice bean or configure it directly on RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.

See Interceptors in the section on MVC configuration for examples of how to configure interceptors. You can also register them directly by using setters on individual HandlerMapping implementations.

Interceptors are not ideally suited as a security layer due to the potential for a mismatch with annotated controller path matching. Generally, we recommend using Spring Security, or alternatively a similar approach integrated with the Servlet filter chain, and applied as early as possible.