Question

Having the following code:

@RequestMapping(value =  "/system/login", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public void login(@RequestBody Login login) {
    if(login.username == "test" && login.password == "test") {
         //return HTTP 200
    }
    else {
         //return HTTP 400
    }
}

I would like to return two different HTTP statuses based on my logic. What is the best way to achieve this?

Answer 1

One approach which someone suggested at SO is to throw different exceptions which will be catch by different exception handlers:

@RequestMapping(value =  "/system/login", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public void login(@RequestBody Login login) {
    if(login.username == "test" && login.password == "test") {
         throw new AllRightException();
    }
    else {
         throw new AccessDeniedException();
    }
}

@ExceptionHandler(AllRightException.class)
@ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.OK)
public void whenAllRight() {

}

@ExceptionHandler(AccessDeniedException.class)
@ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST)
public void whenAccessDenied() {

}

See also:

• @ExceptionHandler
• @ResponseStatus

BTW, your example code contains error: login.password == "test" you should use equals() there 🙂

---

Updated: I found another approach which even better because it doesn’t use exceptions:

@RequestMapping(value =  "/system/login", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public ResponseEntity<String> login(@RequestBody Login login) {
    if(login.username == "test" && login.password == "test") {
         return new ResponseEntity<String>("OK" HttpStatus.OK);
    }

    return new ResponseEntity<String>("ERROR", HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST);
}

See also ResponseEntity API