How to handle DataIntegrityViolationException in Spring?

Question

I need to show custom messages in my Spring 3.0 application. I have a database with Hibernate and there are several constraints. I have doubts in how DataIntegrityViolationException should be handled in a good way. I wonder if there is a way to map the exception with a message set in a properties file, as it is possible in Constraints validation. Could I handle it automatically in any way or I have to catch this exception in each controller?

Answer 1

Spring 3 provides two ways of handling this - HandlerExceptionResolver in your beans.xml, or @ExceptionHandler in your controller. They both do the same thing - they turn the exception into a view to render.

Both are documented here.

Answer 2

The problem with showing user-friendly messages in the case of constraint violation is that the constraint name is lost when Hibernate's ConstraintViolationException is being translated into Spring's DataIntegrityViolationException.

However, you can customize this translation logic. If you use LocalSessionFactoryBean to access Hibernate, you can supply it with a custom SQLExceptionTranslator (see LocalSessionFactoryBean.jdbcExceptionTranslator). This exception translator can translate a ConstraintViolationException into your own exception class, preserving the constraint name.