Accessing methods from imported jars in managed beans - xpages

Question

I'm sure I'm missing something, but I'm not seeing it at all.
I'm creating PDFs using iText, and I want to do this in a bean. I've created one, but it's been erroring out. It seems some of the ways I've usually worked in Java don't seem to work in this bean.
For example, this line:
com.itextpdf.text.Document document1 = new com.itextpdf.text.Document();
will throw the error java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com.itextpdf.text.Document, even though the jar is imported, in the build path and com.itextpdf.text.Document is imported in the bean.
if you change it to this:
com.itextpdf.text.Document document1;
or
com.itextpdf.text.Document document1 = null;
the error goes away. I don't understand why one way works and the other doesn't, but it's a fairly easy change to make.
Now I need to set the page size. This will work in Eclipse:
document1.setPageSize(PageSize.LETTER);
but this is the error I get:
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com.itextpdf.text.PageSize
Which might be because I've set it to null to initialize it. But
document1 = new Document();
and
document1 = new com.itextpdf.text.Document();
both throw java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com.itextpdf.text.Document
Oddly, the import statement for (iText) Document warns me it is never used.
document1.open();
will give the error java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com.itextpdf.text.Document as well.
So, am I missing something in the syntax in beans? I've created Notes Java agents, XAgents, and straight up Java Eclipse projects that work, but I can't get the methods to work in a 8.5.3 Java Bean. I imported the iText jars into WebContent\WEB-INF\lib and then added those (via add jars, not add external jars) to the build path. I've gotten the latest jars and I'm using them, I've built and cleaned, the bean is in faces-config. But I'm doing something wrong, and I can't see it.
If someone could point me in the right direction, I would be very grateful.
Cheers,
Brian
EDIT:
The license isn't a problem, but I still can't get the class to load even using the classLoader:
Thread currentThread = Thread.currentThread();
ClassLoader clCurrent = currentThread.getContextClassLoader();
//ClassLoader clCurrent=com.ibm.domino.xsp.module.nsf.NotesContext.getCurrent().getModule().getModuleClassLoader();
try {
currentThread.setContextClassLoader(Activator.class.getClassLoader());
DebugToolbar.get().info("after setting up FileOutputStream");
com.itextpdf.text.Document document1 = new com.itextpdf.text.Document();
//com.itextpdf.text.Document document1;
//com.itextpdf.text.Document document1 = null;
//document1 = new com.itextpdf.text.Document();
//document1.open();
document1.setPageSize(PageSize.LETTER);
I still get java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com.itextpdf.text.Document
I've cut the beans out, cleaned, built, pasted back in, cleaned built, still the error.
I appreciate the assistance.
Brian

Answer 1

Most likely you have a classloader isssue. Unless your app is strictly for internal use, you might reconsider use of iText since it is GPL. Apache PDFBox is an Apache licensed alternative (I'm particularly fond of) or Apache FOP (I'll complete the ]2 missing articles](http://www.wissel.net/blog/htdocs/DominoXSLT), promise). Of course OpenNTF's POI4XPages might just be what you need.

Answer 2

I called Lotus/ICS support. It seems for 8.5.3, if you put the jars in ~Lotus\Notes\jvm\lib\ext they will load. I'm testing this on my local, but the same path should work on the server. I'll test that Monday. I had researched, and if that is mentioned I didn't find it. Jars will be a design element in 9, putting them in a directory like this should not be needed for that version, but it seems that adding them this way is more consistent now. The jars have loaded properly for some applications I've made, so this confused me a bit.
Stephan and Panu, thank you for responding.
Brian