Spring Controllers: Can I call a method before each @RequestMapping method is called?

Just annotate a method with @ModelAttribute

The below would add a Foo instance to the model under the name "foo"

@ModelAttribute("foo")
public Foo foo() {
    return new Foo();
}

See the @ModelAttribute documentation

Interceptor is the solution. It has methods preHandler and postHandler, which will be called before and after each request respectively. You can hook into each HTTPServletRequest object and also by pass few by digging it.

here is a sample code:

@Component
public class AuthCodeInterceptor extends HandlerInterceptorAdapter {

    @Override
    public boolean preHandle(HttpServletRequest request,
            HttpServletResponse response, Object handler) throws Exception {

        // set few parameters to handle ajax request from different host
        response.addHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*");
        response.addHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Methods", "POST, GET, OPTIONS");
        response.addHeader("Access-Control-Max-Age", "1000");
        response.addHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Headers", "Content-Type");
        response.addHeader("Cache-Control", "private");

        String reqUri = request.getRequestURI();
        String serviceName = reqUri.substring(reqUri.lastIndexOf("/") + 1,
                reqUri.length());
                if (serviceName.equals("SOMETHING")) {

                }
        return super.preHandle(request, response, handler);
    }

    @Override
    public void postHandle(HttpServletRequest request,
            HttpServletResponse response, Object handler,
            ModelAndView modelAndView) throws Exception {

        super.postHandle(request, response, handler, modelAndView);
    }
}

All methods that have the @ModelAttribute annotation are called before the specific handler and the return values are added to the Model instance. Then you can use this attributes in your views and as handler parameters.

I found this blog very useful.