JSF 1.1 on Websphere 7 - jsf

I am having an application which was developed using JSF 1.1 components. The tag libraries development team, is not going to support JSF 1.2, and we have to run the application on Webshere 7. As websphere 7, by default comes with JSF 1.2. Initially, i was able to deploy my application, but was unable to access it. Later, I read somewhere to remove "Precompile JSP" option, i did that and i was able to access the application. But i am facing some weird thing, first time i am able to login to application, but if i logout and then tries to login again, it is giving exceptions. The exception is javax.faces.el.EvaluationException: Exception while invoking expression #{login.authenticate}, where login is my bean name and authenticate is the method. Moreover, I want some other way, so that i should keep "Precompile jsp" option selected. I read somewhere about shared libraries, but not aware how to actually implement that. My war file contains jsf-api.jar and jsf-impl.jar of JSF 1.1.

Do you see some errors regarding propertyLoader? I had similar problem, and removed from config file custom propertyLoader (left standart), and it became almost ok.

Related

javaee-api-7.0 with JSF 2.2: f:ajax does not submit

I have a Spring 4.1.1, JSF 2.2.3, Primefaces 5.1 web application that run on Java 8 and Tomcat 8.
Everything worked perfectly until my colleague added the javaee-api-7.0 as a dependency for javax for ActiveMQ.
With this jar in, every ajax call doesn't submit data to the backend. For example filters on primefaces datadatable would always pass an empty value, ajax refresh wouldn't take into account processed fields, etc. If I remove the jar, everything start to work again.
Unfortunately the logs don't show any error, the output is exactly the same of when the jar is not included. I'm not sure also with which component the conflict is, I would assume JSF but I have no clue and I can't find any documentation online.
Everything worked perfectly until my colleague added the javaee-api-7.0 as a dependency for javax for ActiveMQ.
You're indeed not supposed to have that JAR in webapp's runtime classpath. This kind of library is supposed to be already provided by the target Java EE container. Examples of Java EE containers are WildFly, GlassFish, Liberty, TomEE, etc. You've there however Tomcat, which is a barebones servletcontainer supporting from the huge Java EE API only JSP, Servlet and EL APIs, on which you have to manually install every other Java EE artifact, such as JSF and JMS.
The javaee-api.jar contains ALL Java EE APIs, including the JSF API (which is of 2.2.0 version). In your case, this one apparently got precedence in classloading over the JSF API version which you already had in /WEB-INF/lib. This will only result in "odd" behavior, because the loaded JSF impl version doesn't match the loaded JSF API version.
You need to solve it differently. You need to install JMS in its own API/impl JAR files, exactly like as you already did for JSF, and thus absolutely not via a "global" javaee-api.jar file. In case of ActiveMQ, the JMS API is available in activemq-all.jar. Use that one instead. It covers everything needed in order to get ActiveMQ to run on Tomcat.
See also:
how to include javax.jms.* in eclipse?
How do I import the javax.servlet API in my Eclipse project?

Enum parameter in EL expression on Websphere

In a JSF/facelet page, I'm trying to call a method with an enum value as a parameter, like this:
<f:viewAction action="#{myController.myMethod('MY_ENUM_VALUE')}" />
The code is working correctly using Tomcat but when trying with Websphere, this is not working anymore and I get the following exception.
Caused by: javax.el.MethodNotFoundException: /myPage.xhtml #16,24 action="#{myController.myMethod('MY_ENUM_VALUE')}": Method not found: com.example.MyController#807f4c26.myMethod(java.lang.String)
at com.sun.faces.facelets.el.TagMethodExpression.invoke(TagMethodExpression.java:109)
I'm wondering if there is a simple solution (configuration in Websphere?) or if I should integrate a different EL implementation in my WAR to override the one of Websphere. Any other suggestion is also welcome.
Additional information:
Websphere 8.5, using Mojarra 2.2.5 implementation (override implementation of Websphere, using PARENT_LAST mode)
Using Spring (with the SpringBeanFacesELResolver configured in faces-config.xml)
I'm not packaging any special EL implementation in the EAR/WAR.
Tomcat does not provide a JSF implementation so you are free to provide any version compatible with the servler/JSP version provided by your Tomcat server.
However, WebSphere AS 8.5 is a full Java EE 6 application server that integrates JSF into the container.
Bundling libraries into a WAR that are contained in the server does not automatically override the server libraries. Java defaults to a parent-first class loading model. Some of the configuration information available in arbitrary enterprise libraries may not make sense to the container and result in undefined behavior. Additionally, deployment descriptors can specify the loading of WAR-specific libraries that are not necessarily compatible with the container.
Some containers (WebSphere among them) support parent-last class loading. This can result in so much weird behavior it should generally be avoided.
As far as I am aware there is only one documented way to support a com.sun.faces... JSF implementation and I suspect in is only temporarily there to support WAS 7 binary JSF app WAR files.
So, it is possible that you are not really overriding the platform implementation but are triggering some undefined behavior by bundling JSF libraries in the WAR file.
It is possible I've missed something about what you are doing; if so, provide more details.

IllegalArgumentException: com.ibm.ws.jsf.config.annotation.WASMyFacesAnnotationProvider is no org.apache.myfaces.spi.AnnotationProvider

I am trying to deploy an application on Websphere 8.5.5
I've created a shared library for Websphere that includes myfaces 2.2 jars and other dependencies like commons-collections.
I also made the class loader of my application as PARENT_LAST.
When I deploy the application, I get this exception:
An error occured while initializing MyFaces: Class com.ibm.ws.jsf.config.annotation.WASMyFacesAnnotationProvider is no org.apache.myfaces.spi.AnnotationProvider
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Class com.ibm.ws.jsf.config.annotation.WASMyFacesAnnotationProvider is no org.apache.myfaces.spi.AnnotationProvider
at org.apache.myfaces.shared.util.ClassUtils.buildApplicationObject(ClassUtils.java:557)
at org.apache.myfaces.shared.util.ClassUtils.buildApplicationObject(ClassUtils.java:524)
I was looking at running a newer version of MyFaces on WAS 8.5.5, and ran into a similar issue. It appears to be a conflict between the code IBM wrote to support its embedded version of MyFaces, and an application- or shared library-provided MyFaces.
IBM provides a way to circumvent this issue. When WAS 8.0 shipped, it provided a feature to allow select either "SunRI1.2" or "MyFaces" as the server-provided JSF. Setting the default to "SunRI1.2" would remove the server-provided MyFaces from the classpath and allow the developer to provide their own.
Select any application
Click JSP and JSF Options
In the JSF implementation section, change the drop-down to SunRI1.2
Click OK
Save configuration and restart server

Can a jetty 5 custom classloader exclude specific jar files in a war?

I've got a large code base that currently runs on JSF 1.1 on embedded Jetty 5.1.14 server (Servlet 2.4). I've managed to get a JSF 2.0.9 app running on this version of Jetty even though I'd expected to require servlet 2.5, and I add EL 2.1.2 & the JSF jar to WEB-INF/lib. This works on a jetty config that excludes JSF 1.1.
The production environment consists of a large number of war and jar files on a single server instance.
JSF 1.1 is currently in the server ext/lib folder, and in a single war file I'd like to include the JSF 2 jar in the WEB-INF/lib. This is not possible as the server JSF version will load first and cause classpath pollution.
However would it be possible to eliminate the JSF 1.1 jar loading in just the one war file with a custom classloader? The documentation seems to cater for the case of adding paths to the classpath rather than excluding things. I wasn't clear whether it's loaded in the context of the server as a whole or just the war.
A little more information: Another potential solution is to simply upgrade to Jetty 8 and JSF 2.1+. Apart from convincing management that this is a good idea, we use an old WebMethods7 version, this has a graphical layout tool that produces some XML that is translated by a Component Application Framework, which uses the JSF APIs to generate content (so only a very few JSPs). This would simply be a case of seeing if it works, and if not having a total rethink because of the need to keep supporting this WebMethods "code".
The main goal here is to ultimately run up to date software although not necessarily in one step.
Jetty5 is incredibly old at this point and I would recommend working on the update to jetty8, or waiting a couple of months and making the jump to jetty9 which we are currently releasing milestones for. Changes in the newer jvm's since then alone are enough reason to update your jetty container.
I don't know if this approach was supported in jetty5 or not, but in jetty6 we have ability on the webapp context to modify the classes that are exposed to the context via system and server classes. If those hooks exists then you should be able to tweak that specific context to not expose the classes in the jar in ext/lib.

Websphere 7 and JSF 1.2 - Application was not properly initialized at startup, could not find Factory

JSF 1.1 and websphere 6.1 was working properly in my case. Once I deployed that to a websphere 7 server, I received the following error -
Application was not properly initialized at startup, could not find Factory: javax.faces.context.FacesContextFactoryat javax.faces.FactoryFinder.getFactory(FactoryFinder.java:270)
at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.init(FacesServlet.java:164)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapper.init(ServletWrapper.java:358)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.servlet.ServletWrapperImpl.init(ServletWrapperImpl.java:168)
Not sure what it means, I have enabled JSF1.2 as project facet in the RAD but still keep getting the above error message and none of my jsf files are working.
EDIT
After following BalusC's comment, I see the following directories are lookup by the code (this is the o/p of url.getPath())
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/profiles/AppSrv01/properties/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/properties/
/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/java/lib/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/lib/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/deploytool/itp/plugins/com.ibm.etools.ejbdeploy/runtime/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/installedConnectors/sib.api.jmsra.rar/
/C:/IBM/SDP/runtimes/base_v7/installedConnectors/wmq.jmsra.rar/
/C:/DETSphere10/DET_FALL9.0/DETEJB/classes/
/C:/DETSphere10/DET_FALL9.0/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.wst.server.core/tmp0/DETWEB/
There is no jsf impl in among these directories. Now I am more confused as the original lib should be present under c:\IBM\SDP\runtimes\base_v7\plugins !!
This is a typical error when there are multiple different versioned JSF libraries in the classpath. Websphere ships with builtin JSF libraries. If you'd like to use the webapp-supplied JSF libraries, then you need to set the classloading policy to module after deploying. This usually defaults to application which means that the webapp libraries are loaded by the main classloader. The main classloader may happen to have loaded the JSF API library. When its version is different from the JSF IMPL library in the webapp, then you may receive this kind of errors.
Update to help with nailing down the root cause better here are 2 suggestions:
You can reveal all used classpath roots on the local disk file system as follows:
for (URL url : Collections.list(Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResources(""))) {
System.out.println(url.getPath());
}
Execute this in ServletContextListener#contextInitialized() or so.
(eventually after finding that out), install WinRAR, associate it with JAR file type and use its file-search facility to search for a JSF specific file like FacesContext.class and FacesContextImpl.class so that you can find all JAR's which contains the JSF API/impl. You can find out the exact JSF version by extracting the JAR and reading the MANIFEST file.
You need to keep the JSF JAR's (icu4j.jar and jsf-ibm.jar if you are using IBM's component library) in your /WEB-INF/lib folder.

Resources