Spring 4 upgrade broke error page filter chain - spring-mvc

Question

Scenario:
We have an interceptor that looks for bogus attributes in URLs and throws a NoSuchRequestHandlingMethodException if it finds one. We then display a custom 404 page.
All pages go through the same filter chain to set up the local request state, log some information, and then display the requested page. In Spring 4, it stopped going through the filter chain for the 404 page in this case. It still goes through it if you go to a completely bogus page, and the 404 works, but when we throw the NoSuchRequestHandlingMethodException, the filters don't happen.
Spring 3:
1. Runs the filter chain for the main request
2. We throw NoSuchRequestHandlingMethodException
3. Filter chain finishes
4. New filter chain starts
5. We log the error page metrics
6. We display a nice 404 page to the customer
Spring 4:
1. Runs the filter chain for the main request
2. We throw NoSuchRequestHandlingMethodException
3. Filter chain finishes
4. We try to log the error page metrics, but NPE since a second filter chain never started
5. We display a terrible blank page to the customer
Filter code in web.xml:
<!-- The filter that captures the HttpServletRequest and HttpServletResponse-->
<filter>
<filter-name>ServletObjectFilter</filter-name>
<filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>targetBeanName</param-name>
<param-value>xxxxxxx.servletObjectFilter</param-value>
</init-param>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>ServletObjectFilter</filter-name>
<servlet-name>springmvc</servlet-name>
<dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
<dispatcher>FORWARD</dispatcher>
<dispatcher>ERROR</dispatcher>
</filter-mapping>
...
<error-page>
<error-code>404</error-code>
<location>/errors/404</location>
</error-page>
Filter code:
public void doFilterInternal( HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, FilterChain chain )
throws ServletException, IOException {
try {
getServletContainer().setServletObjects( request, response );
chain.doFilter( request, response );
} finally {
getServletContainer().removeAll();
}
ServletContainer:
static final ThreadLocal< HttpServletRequest > REQUESTS = new ThreadLocal< HttpServletRequest >();
static final ThreadLocal< HttpServletResponse > RESPONSES = new ThreadLocal< HttpServletResponse >();
public void setServletObjects( HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response ) {
REQUESTS.set( request );
RESPONSES.set( response );
}
public void removeAll() {
REQUESTS.remove();
RESPONSES.remove();
}
Code that then fails:
public class RequestResponseAwareBeanPostProcessor implements BeanPostProcessor {
public Object postProcessBeforeInitialization( Object bean, String beanName ) {
...
if ( bean instanceof RequestAware ) {
HttpServletRequest request = getServletContainer().getRequest();
if ( request == null ) {
throw new IllegalStateException( "The request object is NULL" );
}
RequestAware requestAware = (RequestAware) bean;
requestAware.setRequest( request );
}
}

Answer 1

I "solved" the problem by splitting up my error page #Controller into two, one where they're the targets of internal redirects and don't get the filter chain, and one where they are directly loaded, and do get the filter chain. I then added the redirect #Controller to the interceptor blacklist, so it doesn't require any logic or data from the filters. It solved this specific problem, but I'm worried that something else in my codebase also relies on this behavior.