Running Primefaces (JSF2) application on Websphere 6.1

Question

I have been attempting to get my Primefaces based web application to run on the customer's WAS 6.1.0.23 machine. I have tried both the reference and Myfaces implementations of JSF2, the latter of which has instructions for install on this specific server version ( http://wiki.apache.org/myfaces/Websphere_Installation ).

I have included the necessary libraries (listed below for each implementation individually) in the .war file of the application.

The reference implementation

• primefaces-5.0.jar
• jstl-api.jar
• jstl-impl.jar (both 1.2.2)
• el-api-2.2.jar
• el-impl-2.2.jar
• el-ri-1.0.jar
• javax.faces.jar
• JDK 1.5

The Myfaces implementation

• commons-beanutils-1.8.3.jar
• commons-collections-3.2.jar
• commons-codec-1.3.jar
• commons-digester-1.8.jar
• commons-el.jar/(el-api-2.2.jar, el-impl-2.2.jar, el-ri-1.0.jar) [tried both, only the latter seems to be recognized]
• myfaces-api-2.1.1
• myfaces-bundle-2.1.17.jar
• myfaces-impl-2.1.17.jar
• JDK 1.5

I have set the application to load classes application first.

Enterprise Applications > MyWebApp_war > Manage Modules > MyWebApp.war
Class loader order:
Classes loaded with application class loader first

When using the reference implementation, I progressively added necessary libraries to the .war file until I got an exception that I could not get around.

[7/9/15 16:09:42:909 EDT] 00001183 WebApp        E   Exception caught while initializing context
java.lang.RuntimeException: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: java/util/ServiceLoader
at com.sun.faces.config.ConfigureListener.contextInitialized(ConfigureListener.java:280)
at com.ibm.ws.wswebcontainer.webapp.WebApp.notifyServletContextCreated(WebApp.java:652)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.webapp.WebApp.commonInitializationFinish(WebApp.java:355)
at com.ibm.ws.wswebcontainer.webapp.WebApp.initialize(WebApp.java:292)
at com.ibm.ws.wswebcontainer.webapp.WebGroup.addWebApplication(WebGroup.java:92)
at com.ibm.ws.wswebcontainer.VirtualHost.addWebApplication(VirtualHost.java:157)
at com.ibm.ws.wswebcontainer.WebContainer.addWebApp(WebContainer.java:671)
at com.ibm.ws.wswebcontainer.WebContainer.addWebApplication(WebContainer.java:624)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.component.WebContainerImpl.install(WebContainerImpl.java:335)
at com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.component.WebContainerImpl.start(WebContainerImpl.java:551)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ApplicationMgrImpl.start(ApplicationMgrImpl.java:1274)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.DeployedApplicationImpl.fireDeployedObjectStart(DeployedApplicationImpl.java:1138)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.DeployedModuleImpl.start(DeployedModuleImpl.java:569)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.DeployedApplicationImpl.start(DeployedApplicationImpl.java:817)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ApplicationMgrImpl.startApplication(ApplicationMgrImpl.java:921)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ApplicationMgrImpl$1.run(ApplicationMgrImpl.java:1461)
at com.ibm.ws.security.auth.ContextManagerImpl.runAs(ContextManagerImpl.java:4132)
at com.ibm.ws.security.auth.ContextManagerImpl.runAsSystem(ContextManagerImpl.java:4229)
at com.ibm.ws.security.core.SecurityContext.runAsSystem(SecurityContext.java:245)
at com.ibm.ws.runtime.component.ApplicationMgrImpl.startApplication(ApplicationMgrImpl.java:1466)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor789.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
at sun.reflect.misc.Trampoline.invoke(MethodUtil.java:36)
at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor41.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
at sun.reflect.misc.MethodUtil.invoke(MethodUtil.java:243)
at javax.management.modelmbean.RequiredModelMBean.invokeMethod(RequiredModelMBean.java:1073)
at javax.management.modelmbean.RequiredModelMBean.invoke(RequiredModelMBean.java:954)
at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.DynamicMetaDataImpl.invoke(DynamicMetaDataImpl.java:213)
at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.MetaDataImpl.invoke(MetaDataImpl.java:220)
at com.sun.jmx.interceptor.DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.invoke(DefaultMBeanServerInterceptor.java:815)
at com.sun.jmx.mbeanserver.JmxMBeanServer.invoke(JmxMBeanServer.java:784)
at com.ibm.ws.management.AdminServiceImpl$1.run(AdminServiceImpl.java:1106)
...

With the Myfaces implementation, the same process was followed. However, it was not able to start the application with the commons-el.jar. So, switching it out for el-api-2.2.jar, el-impl-2.2.jar, and el-ri-1.0.jar produced a result where the application would start, and catch a NameNotFoundException on the JSTL namespace

Warning: The page /template/common/commonLayout.xhtml declares namespace http://xmlns.jcp.org/jsf/core and uses the tag f:view , but no TagLibrary associated to namespace.

The following snippet is of the addition to WEB-INF/web.xml that changed to using the provided expresion language implementation. It is followed by a System out dump.

<context-param>
    <param-name>org.apache.myfaces.EXPRESSION_FACTORY</param-name>
    <param-value>com.sun.el.ExpressionFactoryImpl</param-value>
</context-param>
<context-param>
    <param-name>com.sun.faces.expressionFactory</param-name>
    <param-value>com.sun.el.ExpressionFactoryImpl</param-value>
</context-param>

Sorry, the SystemOut.log is too long to paste directly: http://pastebin.com/JQ2br2Dq

So, my question is, has anyone successfully gotten a JSF2-based (Primefaces) web application to run on WAS 6.1, and what are the step-by-step instructions to do so? Thank you very much for your help.

Also, NB this application is known working on all Apache Tomcat versions that support JSF2.

Answer 1

WebSphere Application Server only supports Java 5, but the error indicates that the JSF implementation ( com.sun.faces.config.ConfigureListener ) requires Java 6 since it is attempting to use java.util.ServiceLoader , which was only added in that version. You'll either need to pick an older JSF implementation or a newer WebSphere Application Server version (note that 6.1 was end of service as of 2013).