Better approach to return HttpStatus code Spring REST

Question

I develope rest service using spring for a long time, and till now my approach to return http status code was like this:

    @RequestMapping(value = "/sth")
    public void name(HttpServletResponse response){
        boolean lever = service.doSomethingAndReturnTrueIfSucceedOrFalseIfNot();
        if(lever){
            response.setStatus(HttpServletResponse.SC_OK);
        }else{
            response.setStatus(HttpServletResponse.SC_BAD_REQUEST); //NOT_FOUND or whatever
        }
    }

But I am sure there is a better way to do this. I know that we have @ResponseStatus annotation, but it is.. static, I mean it returns always the same code - but what if something would have gone wrong? Then I dont want for example, to have 200 OK as response code.

I found the solution like this: add @ResponseStatus as static response code, but when something goes wrong in the controller, then throw some custom exception and catch it in new @ControllerAdvice class, and there also add @ResponseStatus annotation and return proper code.

    @RequestMapping(value = "/sth")
    @ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.OK)
    public void name(HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception{
        boolean lever = service.doSomethingAndReturnTrueIfSucceedOrFalseIfNot();
        if(!lever){
            throw new SomethingWentWrongCustomException("Not okay..");
        }
    }

And then catch it in the class like:

@ControllerAdvice
public class SomethingControllerAdvice{
    @ExceptionHandler(value = SomethingWentWrongCustomException.class)
    @ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST)
    public void someName(){
    }
}

It seems to be quite elegant solution, but the code is quite.. wordy, isnt it? On the other hand, If I adopt this for whole application and create @ControllerAdvice classes, then It could have sense What do you think about it? Is there any other, maybe better approach?

I hope it is not opinion based question and I dont want it to be. I just dont want to use anti-patterns and have good practices from begginings :)

Solution

Returning ResponseEntity as @M-deinum wrote is definitely way to go. Additionally, instead of defining behavior for each exception in @ControllerAdvice you can just annotate your exceptions classes with appropriate @ResponseStatus annotations.

@ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST)
class SomeException extends RuntimeException {

}