Can the stacktrace in Spring Boot be reduced?

Question

Is it possible to reduce the stacktrace from an exception down to ignore Springs stack?

When a method of mine throws a IllegalArgumentException (as intended) and I log the message and stacktrace in log4j, I get an entire log of Springs stack as well while all I really need for my own exceptions thrown is the relevant part in the code that is actually in play.

For example the below stack should be reduced to 8 lines, ignoring the org.springframework and forward.

ERROR  2015-10-19 13:36:38,138 ID-TESTPRVR AccountDataValidation -Failed to parse Account Data!
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unsupported String length: [4]
com.test.util.AccountData.<init>(AccountData.java:105)
com.test.AccountDataValidation.getAccountData(AccountDataValidation.java:61)
sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:606)
org.springframework.web.method.support.InvocableHandlerMethod.doInvoke(InvocableHandlerMethod.java:221)
org.springframework.web.method.support.InvocableHandlerMethod.invokeForRequest(InvocableHandlerMethod.java:137)
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.ServletInvocableHandlerMethod.invokeAndHandle(ServletInvocableHandlerMethod.java:110)
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.invokeHandleMethod(RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.java:776)
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.handleInternal(RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.java:705)
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.AbstractHandlerMethodAdapter.handle(AbstractHandlerMethodAdapter.java:85)
org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:959)
org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doService(DispatcherServlet.java:893)
org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:967)
org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doPost(FrameworkServlet.java:869)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:648)
org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.service(FrameworkServlet.java:843)
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:729)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:291)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
org.apache.tomcat.websocket.server.WsFilter.doFilter(WsFilter.java:52)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:239)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
org.springframework.boot.actuate.autoconfigure.EndpointWebMvcAutoConfiguration$ApplicationContextHeaderFilter.doFilterInternal(EndpointWebMvcAutoConfiguration.java:295)
org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:107)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:239)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
org.springframework.boot.actuate.trace.WebRequestTraceFilter.doFilterInternal(WebRequestTraceFilter.java:102)
org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:107)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:239)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
org.springframework.web.filter.HiddenHttpMethodFilter.doFilterInternal(HiddenHttpMethodFilter.java:77)
org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:107)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:239)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
org.springframework.web.filter.CharacterEncodingFilter.doFilterInternal(CharacterEncodingFilter.java:85)
org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:107)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:239)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
org.springframework.boot.actuate.autoconfigure.MetricsFilter.doFilterInternal(MetricsFilter.java:69)
org.springframework.web.filter.OncePerRequestFilter.doFilter(OncePerRequestFilter.java:107)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:239)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:219)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:106)
org.apache.catalina.authenticator.AuthenticatorBase.invoke(AuthenticatorBase.java:502)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:142)
org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:79)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:88)
org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:518)
org.apache.coyote.http11.AbstractHttp11Processor.process(AbstractHttp11Processor.java:1091)
org.apache.coyote.AbstractProtocol$AbstractConnectionHandler.process(AbstractProtocol.java:673)
org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.doRun(NioEndpoint.java:1526)
org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(NioEndpoint.java:1482)
java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.TaskThread$WrappingRunnable.run(TaskThread.java:61)
java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

Also, of course, when Spring throws an exception on its own, I would expect it to show its stacktrace.

Answer 1

There is an open source lib for that: MgntUtils (available at Github and maven central) that contains a general purpose stacktrace filter which is quite useful. Let's say your code always resides in packages that start with "com.foo.*" So you set the prefix and do this

logger.info(TextUtils.getStacktrace(e,true,"com.foo."));

this will filter out all the useless parts of the trace leaving you with very concise stacktrace.

Answer 2

There's a Log4J add-on that can filter the stack trace. With the custom layout on the classpath, you can then configure the elements to filter out in your config:

<appender name="console" class="org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender">
    <layout class="it.openutils.log4j.FilteredPatternLayout">
        <param name="ConversionPattern" value="%-5p  %c %F(%M:%L) %d{dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm:ss}  %m%n" />
        <param name="Filter" value="org.apache.catalina" />
        <param name="Filter" value="org.apache.tomcat" />
        <param name="Filter" value="org.apache.coyote" />
        <param name="Filter" value="org.myapp.web.filters" />
        <param name="Filter" value="com.opensymphony.module.sitemesh.filter" />
        <param name="Filter" value="sun.reflect" />
        <param name="Filter" value="javax.servlet.http" />
    </layout>
</appender>

Answer 3

Google's Guava library has some nice utility methods in it's Throwables API. For your particular case, I think getRootCause(Throwable) or getCausalChain(Throwable) would work well.

Causal Chain Guava makes it somewhat simpler to study the causal chain of an exception, providing three useful methods whose signatures are self-explanatory:

Throwable getRootCause(Throwable)
List<Throwable> getCausalChain(Throwable)
String getStackTraceAsString(Throwable)