spring migration 4 to 5; what is causing java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean

Question

I am migrating an old app from Spring 4 to 5. It builds fine with Maven, but when I start the app in jboss 7.1, I get this error:

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean

Spring 5.3.20
Hibernate 5.3.28.Final

I have been following this guide, https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-framework/wiki/Upgrading-to-Spring-Framework-5.x

This said Hibernate 5 is required, so I updated that in the pom to 5.3.28.Final

Here is relevant snippet of spring-context.xml:

<bean id="hibernateSessionFactory"
    class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
    <property name="annotatedClasses">
        <list>
            <value>com.mycompany.bean.FooService</value>
        </list>
    </property>
    <property name="hibernateProperties">
        <props>
            <prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.SQLServerDialect</prop>
            <prop key="show_sql">true</prop>
        </props>
    </property>
</bean>

Running with Java 8.

Answer 1

You need to replace org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean with org.springframework.orm.hibernate5.LocalSessionFactoryBean .

The relevant parts of the migration guide are:

Hibernate support has been upgraded to a Hibernate ORM 5.2+ baseline, with a focus on ORM 5.4.x.

This indicates that the minimum version of Hibernate is now Hibernate 5.2.

and

Packages web.view.tiles2 and orm.hibernate3/hibernate4 dropped.

This indicates that the package your XML config is using ( org.springframework.orm.hibernate4 ) no longer exists. Searching for LocalSessionFactoryBean in the Spring Framework 5.3.22 apidoc shows org.springframework.orm.hibernate5.LocalSessionFactoryBean . Its API seems compatible with your XML definition, so changing the class property should be all that you need to change.