The annotation @RequestAttribute (since Spring MVC 4.3) can be used to bind a pre-existing request attribute to a handler method parameter.
Spring retrieves the named attribute's value from ServletRequest#getAttribute(String name) to populate the parameter annotated with @RequestAttribute.
Rather than using HttpServletRequest object directly, using this annotation can benefit auto type conversion and optional/required check. This annotation has an element 'required' which is true by default. That means if the attribute value is not present in the request, an exception will be thrown. If we set it to false then we can avoid the exception but the value received can be null.
Definition of RequestAttributeVersion: 7.0.6 package org.springframework.web.bind.annotation;
@Target(ElementType.PARAMETER)
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Documented
public @interface RequestAttribute {
@AliasFor("name")
String value() default ""; 1
@AliasFor("value")
String name() default ""; 2
boolean required() default true; 3
}
Difference between @RequestParam and @RequestAttribute
@RequestParam is used to bind parameter values from 'query string' e.g. in http://www.example.com?myParam=3, myParam=3 can populate @RequestParam parameter. On the other hand, @RequestAttribute is to access objects which have been populated on the server-side but during the same HTTP request, for example they can be populated in an interceptor or a filter. The difference is the same as the difference between ServletRequest#getParameter(name) and ServletRequest#getAttribute(name)
Example
Following example shows, how to use @RequestAttribute to access visitor counter value, which has been populated as request attribute from an HandlerInterceptor method.
The interceptor
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.AsyncHandlerInterceptor;
import jakarta.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import jakarta.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;
public class MyCounterInterceptor implements AsyncHandlerInterceptor {
private AtomicInteger counter = new AtomicInteger(0);
@Override
public boolean preHandle(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response,
Object handler) {
request.setAttribute("visitorCounter", counter.incrementAndGet());
return true;
}
}
The controller
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestAttribute;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;
@Controller
public class ExampleController {
@RequestMapping("/")
@ResponseBody
public String handle (@RequestAttribute("visitorCounter") Integer counter) {
return String.format("Visitor number: %d", counter);
}
}
Java Config class
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.EnableWebMvc;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.InterceptorRegistry;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.WebMvcConfigurer;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.ViewResolverRegistry;
@EnableWebMvc
@ComponentScan("com.logicbig.example")
public class AppConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {
@Override
public void addInterceptors (InterceptorRegistry registry) {
registry.addInterceptor(new MyCounterInterceptor());
}
}
Run embedded Jetty
To try examples, run embedded Jetty (configured in pom.xml of example project below):
mvn jetty:run Output
Refreshing the page multiple times, will increase the counter value.
$ curl -s http://localhost:8080/example/
Visitor number: 1
Integration Test
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.BeforeEach;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.extension.ExtendWith;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.test.context.ContextConfiguration;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit.jupiter.SpringExtension;
import org.springframework.test.context.web.WebAppConfiguration;
import org.springframework.test.web.servlet.MockMvc;
import org.springframework.test.web.servlet.setup.MockMvcBuilders;
import org.springframework.web.context.WebApplicationContext;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.containsString;
import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.request.MockMvcRequestBuilders.get;
import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.result.MockMvcResultMatchers.content;
import static org.springframework.test.web.servlet.result.MockMvcResultMatchers.status;
@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
@WebAppConfiguration
@ContextConfiguration(classes = AppConfig.class)
public class RequestAttributeIntegrationTest {
@Autowired
private WebApplicationContext wac;
private MockMvc mockMvc;
@BeforeEach
public void setUp() {
mockMvc = MockMvcBuilders
.webAppContextSetup(wac)
.build();
}
@Test
public void firstRequest_returnsVisitorNumberOne() throws Exception {
mockMvc.perform(get("/"))
.andExpect(status().isOk())
.andExpect(content().string(
containsString("Visitor number: 1")));
mockMvc.perform(get("/"))
.andExpect(status().isOk())
.andExpect(content().string(
containsString("Visitor number: 2")));
}
}
mvn clean test -Dtest="RequestAttributeIntegrationTest" Output$ mvn clean test -Dtest="RequestAttributeIntegrationTest"
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[WARNING]
[WARNING] Some problems were encountered while building the effective model for com.logicbig.example:request-attribute-example:war:1.0-SNAPSHOT
[WARNING] 'build.plugins.plugin.version' for org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-war-plugin is missing. @ line 40, column 21
[WARNING]
[WARNING] It is highly recommended to fix these problems because they threaten the stability of your build.
[WARNING]
[WARNING] For this reason, future Maven versions might no longer support building such malformed projects.
[WARNING]
[INFO]
[INFO] -----------< com.logicbig.example:request-attribute-example >-----------
[INFO] Building request-attribute-example 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] from pom.xml
[INFO] --------------------------------[ war ]---------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] --- clean:3.2.0:clean (default-clean) @ request-attribute-example ---
[INFO] Deleting D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\request-attribute-example\target
[INFO]
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:resources (default-resources) @ request-attribute-example ---
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\request-attribute-example\src\main\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- compiler:3.3:compile (default-compile) @ request-attribute-example ---
[INFO] Changes detected - recompiling the module!
[INFO] Compiling 4 source files to D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\request-attribute-example\target\classes
[INFO]
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:testResources (default-testResources) @ request-attribute-example ---
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\request-attribute-example\src\test\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- compiler:3.3:testCompile (default-testCompile) @ request-attribute-example ---
[INFO] Changes detected - recompiling the module!
[INFO] Compiling 1 source file to D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\request-attribute-example\target\test-classes
[INFO]
[INFO] --- surefire:3.2.5:test (default-test) @ request-attribute-example ---
[INFO] Using auto detected provider org.apache.maven.surefire.junitplatform.JUnitPlatformProvider
[WARNING] file.encoding cannot be set as system property, use <argLine>-Dfile.encoding=...</argLine> instead
[INFO]
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] T E S T S
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Running com.logicbig.example.RequestAttributeIntegrationTest
[INFO] Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 1.117 s -- in com.logicbig.example.RequestAttributeIntegrationTest
[INFO]
[INFO] Results:
[INFO]
[INFO] Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0
[INFO]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 6.565 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2026-04-01T16:50:03+08:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
INFO: Completed initialization in 3 ms
Example ProjectDependencies and Technologies Used: - spring-webmvc 7.0.6 (Spring Web MVC)
Version Compatibility: 4.3.0.RELEASE - 7.0.6 Version compatibilities of spring-webmvc with this example: Versions in green have been tested.
- spring-test 7.0.6 (Spring TestContext Framework)
- junit-jupiter-engine 6.0.3 (Module "junit-jupiter-engine" of JUnit)
- hamcrest 3.0 (Core API and libraries of hamcrest matcher framework)
- jakarta.servlet-api 6.1.0 (Jakarta Servlet API documentation)
- JDK 25
- Maven 3.9.11
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