How to register a servlet filter in Spring MVC

In a nutshell, a servlet filter lets you intercepts requests and responses on your web application. This article shows you how to register a servlet filter in Spring XML and JavaConfig.

1. Servlet Filter

Review the following custom filter, it will catch any exceptions and redirect to an error page.


package com.mkyong.form.web;

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.servlet.Filter;
import javax.servlet.FilterChain;
import javax.servlet.FilterConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;

public class ErrorHandleFilter implements Filter {

	@Override
	public void destroy() {
		// ...
	}

	@Override
	public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException {
		//
	}

	@Override
	public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, 
               ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain)
		throws IOException, ServletException {

		try {
			chain.doFilter(request, response);
		} catch (Exception ex) {
			request.setAttribute("errorMessage", ex);
			request.getRequestDispatcher("/WEB-INF/views/jsp/error.jsp")
                               .forward(request, response);
		}

	}

}

2. Spring XML

In Spring MVC + XML configuration, you can register the filters via web.xml

web.xml


	<filter>
		<filter-name>errorHandlerFilter</filter-name>
		<filter-class>com.mkyong.form.web.ErrorHandleFilter</filter-class>
	</filter>
	<filter-mapping>
		<filter-name>errorHandlerFilter</filter-name>
		<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
	</filter-mapping>

3. Spring JavaConfig

In Spring MVC + JavaConfig + no web.xml file, you can register the filters via the initializer class.

MyWebInitializer.java


package com.mkyong.form.config.servlet3;

import javax.servlet.Filter;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.support.AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer;
import com.mkyong.form.config.SpringRootConfig;
import com.mkyong.form.config.SpringWebConfig;
import com.mkyong.form.web.ErrorHandleFilter;

public class MyWebInitializer extends
		AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {

	//...

	@Override
	protected Filter[] getServletFilters() {
		return new Filter[]{new ErrorHandleFilter()};
	}
}

References

Written by mkyong

Founder of Mkyong.com, passionate Java and open-source technologies. If you enjoy my tutorials, consider making a donation to these charities.

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4 comments on “How to register a servlet filter in Spring MVC”

Harsh

March 13, 2018 at 7:20 pm

Why in 2nd Point. The filter-name should be in camelCase.
If you define in TitleCase like this ErrorHandlerFilter. Spring throws and error saying no bean name available.

administras

March 8, 2016 at 4:06 pm

For Spring boot add annotation
@Component
public class ErrorHandleFilter implements Filter {
and that is enough for Spring-boot to register filter.

dit j.

February 5, 2016 at 6:35 am

so and what about url-pattern?

BluePen Labs

September 19, 2015 at 9:53 pm

This works by same way in Spring ? (Not MVC)