Spring REST web service appContext failed

Question

I'm trying to create REST web service using Spring.

I have one controller, one appContext.

Controller:

@Controller
public class RestController {

@RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.POST, value="service/{url}......<params>) 
//some method here

//some logic here

}

And app context:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
        xsi:schemaLocation="
                http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
                http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
                http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
                http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">

        <context:component-scan base-package="spring.rest.controller" />

        <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping" />
        <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter" />

</beans>

I'm using Tomcat 7, when trying to start get exception:

[13:02] ERROR ContextLoader () - Context initialization failed
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/springframework/expression/PropertyAccessor
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.prepareBeanFactory(AbstractApplicationContext.java:567)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:468)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.configureAndRefreshWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:389)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.initWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:294)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener.contextInitialized(ContextLoaderListener.java:106)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:4939)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5434)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1559)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1549)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:334)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:166)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.expression.PropertyAccessor
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1714)
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1559)
    ... 15 more
Jul 23, 2013 1:02:21 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext listenerStart
SEVERE: Exception sending context initialized event to listener instance of class org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/springframework/expression/PropertyAccessor
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.prepareBeanFactory(AbstractApplicationContext.java:567)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:468)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.configureAndRefreshWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:389)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.initWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:294)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener.contextInitialized(ContextLoaderListener.java:106)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:4939)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5434)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1559)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1549)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:334)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:166)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.expression.PropertyAccessor
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1714)
    at org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappClassLoader.loadClass(WebappClassLoader.java:1559)
    ... 15 more

Libs that i used - Spring beans, core, context, web, webmvc, security-core, oxm. PS Never used Spring before, so i have no idea what wrong.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You're missing the Spring expression JAR file .

Since you have already have the Spring core JAR file, you should have the expression JAR file if using a project build manager such as Maven as spring-expression is a dependency of spring-core . In this case, the chances are that there was an problem deploying expression JAR file (either it doesn't exist in your local Maven repository or is corrupt). See here how to refresh your local Maven repositories.

If you're not using a build manager such as Maven, then you will need to manually download the JAR file, matching the version with your existing Spring JAR files.

Answer 2

You may want to consider using RESTEasy with Spring if your main interest is creating RESTful services. I recently wrote this article with a working codebase on how to setup RESTEasy with Spring.