NullPointerException when deploying spring app

Question

I have a Spring application that works perfectly on local, but when moving to dev, this error comes up while deploying:

INFO  [org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase] Initializing Spring root      WebApplicationContext
ERROR [org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase] Exception sending context initialized event to listener instance of class org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener   
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: Unexpected exception    parsing XML document from ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]; nested     exception is java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.doLoadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:412)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:334)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:302)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.java:174)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.java:209)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.java:180)
at org.springframework.web.context.support.XmlWebApplicationContext.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlWebApplicationContext.java:125)
at org.springframework.web.context.support.XmlWebApplicationContext.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlWebApplicationContext.java:94)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.refreshBeanFactory(AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.java:130)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.obtainFreshBeanFactory(AbstractApplicationContext.java:537)
at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:451)
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:112)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:3854)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4352)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:752)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:732)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:553)
 ... more stacktrace ...
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.apache.log4j.Category.isEnabledFor(Category.java:746)
at org.apache.commons.logging.impl.Log4JLogger.isTraceEnabled(Log4JLogger.java:333)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.PluggableSchemaResolver.resolveEntity(PluggableSchemaResolver.java:104)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DelegatingEntityResolver.resolveEntity(DelegatingEntityResolver.java:85)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.ResourceEntityResolver.resolveEntity(ResourceEntityResolver.java:74)
at org.apache.xerces.util.EntityResolverWrapper.resolveEntity(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLEntityManager.resolveEntity(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.XMLSchemaLoader.resolveDocument(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator.findSchemaGrammar(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator.handleStartElement(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.xs.XMLSchemaValidator.startElement(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl.scanStartElement(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLNSDocumentScannerImpl$NSContentDispatcher.scanRootElementHook(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl$FragmentContentDispatcher.dispatch(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.impl.XMLDocumentFragmentScannerImpl.scanDocument(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.XMLParser.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.parsers.DOMParser.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.jaxp.DocumentBuilderImpl.parse(Unknown Source)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.DefaultDocumentLoader.loadDocument(DefaultDocumentLoader.java:75)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.doLoadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:388)
... 146 more
)

It doesn't deploy. I already checked the classpath, Spring and Log4j XML files and all looks good, and I'm running out of ideas about what else to look for.

Any ideas? Any comments will be appreciated :)

Answer 1

Case closed! Turns out, another spring application was not deploying correctly, which, I think, caused static logs for bean factories to mess up other deployments due the static nature of log references.

Hope this helps anybody else. Weird log messages didn't help. Thanks guys for your comments.