INFO: No Spring WebApplicationInitializer types detected on classpath on tomcat 8

Question

I am trying to deploy a java web application on the tomcat 8. The war is built on jdk 1.8 When I see the catalina.log I see that the application is deployed and the server is started successfully. But in the localhost.log I see the message 14-Dec-2015 12:10:42.774 INFO [localhost-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContext.log No Spring WebApplicationInitializer types detected on classpath

Moreover I am not able to launch the welcome page when I hit the app url. No other error in the logs. Can somebody please let me know if I am missing anything.

Thanks Arpit

Answer 1

I got a silly error it took me an embarrassingly long to solve.... Check out my pom.xml ...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> 4.0.0

<groupId>com.outbottle</groupId>
<artifactId>PersonalDetailsMVC</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>war</packaging>

<name>PersonalDetailsMVC</name>

<properties>
    <endorsed.dir>${project.build.directory}/endorsed</endorsed.dir>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <spring.version>4.0.1.RELEASE</spring.version>
    <jstl.version>1.2</jstl.version>
    <javax.servlet.version>3.0.1</javax.servlet.version>
</properties>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax</groupId>
        <artifactId>javaee-web-api</artifactId>
        <version>7.0</version>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.version}</version>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.version}</version>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.version}</version>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
        <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
        <version>${javax.servlet.version}</version>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>jstl</groupId>
        <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
        <version>${jstl.version}</version>
    </dependency>

</dependencies>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.1</version>
            <configuration>
                <source>1.8</source>
                <target>1.8</target>
                <compilerArguments>
                    <endorseddirs>${endorsed.dir}</endorseddirs>
                </compilerArguments>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.3</version>
            <configuration>
                <failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-dependency-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.6</version>
            <executions>
                <execution>
                    <phase>validate</phase>
                    <goals>
                        <goal>copy</goal>
                    </goals>
                    <configuration>
                        <outputDirectory>${endorsed.dir}</outputDirectory>
                        <silent>true</silent>
                        <artifactItems>
                            <artifactItem>
                                <groupId>javax</groupId>
                                <artifactId>javaee-endorsed-api</artifactId>
                                <version>7.0</version>
                                <type>jar</type>
                            </artifactItem>
                        </artifactItems>
                    </configuration>
                </execution>
            </executions>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Problem was my package name. After checking:

a) Runtime package name in the IDE (Netbeans for me) to see if my runtime source was 1.8kjdk against the POM

b) Double checked the POM (pom.xml) to ensure it has the Javax servlet config for annotations (3.0+) and Spring dependencies

c) Double checked my WebInitializer.java (implements WebApplicationInitializer (instead of web.xml)) was syntaxically correct

d) Double checked my Config.java file to ensure it was correctly overloading addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) and the bean for setupViewResolver() was correct

e) Double checked my folder structure to ensure it was correct and the programatic flow looked coherent

f) Remove and redeployed Glassfish to see if anything would change

then I found my issue which was:

f) "com.trainer.config" is wrong! It MUST be "com.outbottle" (then config/controllers/model/etc) for it to work. As you can see above, I used Maven (for the first time), Spring, 1.8 JDK and nearly had a stroke debugging this issue. All running on Glassfish (Tomcat is ok too for the above pom config). That said, I'm all happy with myself now and know Maven and Spring much better for the next step of my Spring learning curve. Hoping this helps you also!