We Keep Coding

Logging and Exception handling in a micro-service in Java

I am working on a microservice which does some calculation based on certain configurations stored in its own data store. The calculations apis are stored via REST APIs. The application is a spring boot application.
Now there are mainly 3 layers in the application :
REST Controller
Service layer
DAO layer - it used spring data.
I am planning to handle the logging and exception handling using below points:
Log each request that the service receives and response or at least
the response if the status is not in 2xx series.
If there are any checked exception in either DAO layer or Service
layer then log them and throw a custom exception derived from
RuntimeException.
Have Several custom exception which should be thrown from Service
layer mainly if we come across scenarios like invalid values, null
values etc.
Have a try catch block in the REST Controller and log the
exception i.e. message along with stacktrace and return the
response accordingly.
So overall idea is to let the RuntimeExceptions propagate all the way to REST Controller where they should be logged and accordingly the response should be sent. Incase of checked exceptions log them in the same method and throw custom exceptions instead.
Please suggest what should be the correct or a good approach for logging exception in such applications.

Write controller advice which will catch all the exceptions & logs the required contents. You may catch exceptions here. I implemented same what you asked here.
*/
/**
* Uncaught exception handler
* #param e - Exception
*/
#ExceptionHandler(Exception.class)
#ResponseStatus(code=HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR)
#ResponseBody
public void handleError(Exception e,HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response){
logger.error("Exception occured : {}",e);
//logs request & response here
}
Also please check AbstractRequestLoggingFilter described here.
For all custom application specific exeptions create your own custom exception type & handle it with the help of #ExceptionHandler as specified in above code block.

Choose only one place to log the exceptions.
In your design, if an exception occurs in DAO, it will:
Get logged in DAO
Then trigger a runtime exception, which will be caught and logged in controller
Which should then return non-2xx response status via REST, which will trigger logging the response as per your first point
So you'll have either the same information in three places, or you will have the different bits of information regarding a single error scattered in two or three places across the log.
Choose a single place to log the errors, and make sure all relevant info is present at that place (i.e. set the underlying DAO exception as a cause of the runtime exception, and don't forget to log the runtime exception along with its cause).

error handling in mulesoft in a flow referencing the another private flow

How does the exception strategy works in mulesoft when we have a flow having its own exception strategy calling another flow with its exception strategy. What will happen if an exception occurs in the called flow.

The called flow will throw the exception and the exception strategy of the called flow will be executed.
the calling flow wont throw an exception until its expecting something from the called flow and the called flow is not returning that.
Refer to this link Mule_Exception for further detailed information.

If the exception occurs in the called flow,The exception strategy of the called flow will get execute and control pass to calling flow to execute next message processor.
Regards,
Purnachandra

How to catch/Handle all uncaught exceptions in Camel

I am currently using doTry/doCatch blocks in my routes due to which I cannot use a global onException block.
However, I want to perform some business logic if camel route ever breaks (because of bad code or unexpected/untested scenarios). This will hopefully never happen, but I still want to handle for worse case.
I cannot have a java.lang.Exception in global onException block, also, I don't want to put an addition catch on every route.
Is there a specific method Camel calls before throwing uncaught exceptions and breaking route.
I see following log for Uncaught Exceptions:
2015-04-20 15:11:35,279 [Camel (fulfillmentOrderProcessor) thread #5 - seda://FulfillmentSedaQueue] WARN o.a.c.component.aws.sqs.SqsConsumer [, ID-ip-10-180-252-213-54360-1429566855015-0-144]: Exchange failed, so rolling back message status: Exchange[Message: {... }]
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unable to parse string argument null
I looked at UnitOfWork.afterprocess. But this will not help as exchange will have exception even if I have handled it in camel route.

by default, Camel will propagate the exception back to the caller, so you can catch the exception in whatever client code invokes the seda://FulfillmentSedaQueue route...
otherwise, the options on the server side (as you mentioned) are to use a global onException clause or route specific doTry/doCatch statements

Why is java ws rs ExceptionMapper is picking non application exceptions also?

I have a web application in which I throw some custom exceptions(application exceptions annotated with #ApplicationException) and there is an exception mapper(provider annotated with #Provider) for each. Recently I forgot to annotate an exception with #ApplicationException and still the mapper is able to identify the exception and format the response properly.
Then I checked the documentation and I understood that the annotation will be inherited by its child class by default. So I removed the annotation from the super class and checked. The mapper still identified the exception and formatted the response.
Then I went even forward and tried throwing java.lang.IllegalArgumentException and wrote a mapper class for it. It also worked properly. Is javax.ws.rs.ext.ExceptionMapper independent of the exception being thrown. Will it not check if whether thrown exception is really annotated with #ApplicationException?
#Provider
public class IllegalArgumentExceptionMapper implements ExceptionMapper<java.lang.IllegalArgumentException> {
#Override
public Response toResponse(java.lang.IllegalArgumentException exception) {
return Response.status(Status.BAD_REQUEST).entity(exception.getMessage()).build();
}
}
Somewhere in my service class:
throw new java.lang.IllegalArgumentException("Problem with the payload. Please check the payload you are sending");

The answer is no, it will not check if whether thrown exception is really annotated with #ApplicationException.
The exception mapper is independent of the #ApplicationException.
All the exception mapper knows is, if there's no exception caught until the almost last layer, it will be processed here, if it find a matching provider.
You can also actually create a provider for RuntimeException and all exception happened in the REST request will land here (but this is not good practice, we should always throw custom exception and catch them with the provider and convert them to good error response).
When you annotate the exception with #ApplicationException you can control things like whether the transaction should be rollback, and whether it will be wrapped by EJBException etc etc.

Exception Logging with Spring

I have heard that it is possible to log (or do something else) Exceptions with Spring in my web-App, so I don't have to manually insert in every "catch(){}" block the Log-function.
Does anyone have experience with Spring-overall-logging? I just want to get informed when an error appears

ExceptionHandler is the central point for handling unexpected Exceptions that are thrown during the Faces lifecycle. The ExceptionHandler must not be notified of any Exceptions that occur during application startup or shutdown.
See the specification prose document for the requirements for the default implementation. Exceptions may be passed to the ExceptionHandler in one of two ways:
1.)By ensuring that Exceptions are not caught, or are caught and re-thrown.
This approach allows the ExceptionHandler facility specified in section JSF.6.2 to operate on the Exception.
2.)By using the system event facility to publish an ExceptionQueuedEvent that wraps the Exception.
This approach requires manually publishing the ExceptionQueuedEvent, but allows more information about the Exception to be stored in the event. The following code is an example of how to do this.
Global Exception Handler – Exception Handling is a cross-cutting concern, it should be done for all the pointcuts in our application. We have already looked into Spring AOP and that’s why Spring provides #ControllerAdvice annotation that we can use with any class to define our global exception handler.
The handler methods in Global Controller Advice is same as Controller based exception handler methods and used when controller class is not able to handle the exception.
Sample Code
#ExceptionHandler(Exception.class)
public ModelAndView getExceptionPage(Exception e, HttpServletRequest request) {
request.setAttribute("errorMessageObject", e.toString());
return model;
}
** Here we can catch the base exception class Exception.class or any other exception class. Also we can throw and catch our own custom defines exception class.