We are happy to announce the availability of the fourth milestone of Spring Framework 6.2. We shipped quite a few features since our last M3 release.

Spring Framework 6.2.0-M4 is available from repo.spring.io/milestone now, check out the detailed release notes for this version.

Core and Testing

The Task and ScheduledTask types now expose metadata about their execution: last execution time and outcome, next scheduled execution time...

We also made further refinements for the new @TestBean and @MockitoBean support. You can read our reference documentation to see this feature in action.

Web and Messaging

@ExceptionHandler methods are now more flexible as they support content negotiation during the error handling phase. This means that you can tailor error handling depending on the content type requested by the HTTP client.

Here's a code snippet showing this feature in action:

@ExceptionHandler(produces = "application/json")
public ResponseEntity<ErrorMessage> handleJson(IllegalArgumentException exc) {
	return ResponseEntity.badRequest().body(new ErrorMessage(exc.getMessage(), 42));
}

@ExceptionHandler(produces = "text/html")
public String handle(IllegalArgumentException exc, Model model) {
	model.addAttribute("error", new ErrorMessage(exc.getMessage(), 42));
	return "errorView";
}

Here, automated clients will get a JSON response, while browsers will display an HTML error page with custom messages.

The community requested the following enhancements - and they're now available!

• RestClient now supports request attributes - a popular request from the community.
• Codecs and converters now officially support Protobuf 4.x, raising our baseline to Protobuf 3.29.
• The new CHIPS feature being deployed by browser vendors require changes in applications using third-party cookies. Reactive web servers (except Undertow) now support Partitioned cookies.
• We have introduced data binding support from HTTP request headers, to @ModelAttribute controller method arguments.

6.2 features recap

Check out our What's New page for details about the new features available at this point.