Cannot deploy Spring App to Websphere

Question

I've been developing an application to tomcat during development phase. As we're moving forward, my client wants to be deployed to websphere. I'm attempting to do so on websphere 8.5, but for some reason I seem to be running into problems. Tomcat is easy, I'm just dropping in the war and everything works like it should. Websphere is a different story. I keep getting the following error when I try to hit my application:

Error 404: SRVE0190E: File not found: {0}

I've been doing some research and aside from the one line below, I don't notice anything strange in the logs. The admin console says the application is running with no problems.

SRVE0292I: Servlet Message - [app#app.war]:.No Spring WebApplicationInitializer types detected on classpath

My application is configured using Java Config files instead of the traditional XML and I'm half guessing this is part of the problem?

I found a blog post saying that there were some server settings that needed to be applied. I've tried those with no success:

com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.mapFiltersToAsterisk=true
com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.removetrailingservletpathslash=true
com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.invokeFiltersCompatibility=true

I'm at a loss, does anyone have any ideas?

Due to some followup, I'll post my web.xml and WebappInitializer:

@Order(2)
public class WebAppInitializer extends AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {

    @Override
    protected String[] getServletMappings() {
        return new String[]{"/"};
    }

    @Override
    protected Class<?>[] getRootConfigClasses() {
        return new Class<?>[] {ApplicationConfig.class, DataSourceConfig.class, JpaConfig.class, SecurityConfig.class, MailConfig.class};
    }

    @Override
    protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses() {
        return new Class<?>[] {WebMvcConfig.class};
    }

    @Override
    protected Filter[] getServletFilters() {
        CharacterEncodingFilter characterEncodingFilter = new CharacterEncodingFilter();
        characterEncodingFilter.setEncoding("UTF-8");
        characterEncodingFilter.setForceEncoding(true);
        return new Filter[] {characterEncodingFilter};
    }

    @Override
    protected void customizeRegistration(ServletRegistration.Dynamic registration) {
        registration.setInitParameter("defaultHtmlEscape", "true");
        registration.setInitParameter("spring.profiles.active", "default");
    }
}

web.xml:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
        version="3.0" metadata-complete="false">
        <!-- Map all errors to Spring MVC handler method. See CustomErrorController.generalError() -->
        <error-page>
            <location>/generalError</location>
        </error-page>
        <session-config>
          <session-timeout>15</session-timeout>
       </session-config>
       <display-name>eua</display-name>
    </web-app>

What is in FFDC logs? How did your class loader policy configured? — Anton Novopashin
Nothing is in the FFDC logs unless I try to hit {context}/x. When I hit the root, nothing goes there. For class loader policy I tried many combinations. I read somewhere that parent_last was supposed to work, but that didn't help either. — Harley Jackson
Have you installed all fix packs for WebSphere? There have been some fixes in the realm of the ServletContextInitializer stuff. In theory it should just work. How are you creating your war/jar file? Is the WebAppInitializer in WEB-INF/classes or inside a jar in WEB-INF/lib? — M. Deinum
It's a brand new deployment of websphere dev version. When I installed I applied all the relevant patches. I'm creating my war using the standard maven configuration. I believe it may wrap up the application inside a jar In the WEB-INF lib dir — Harley Jackson
Its not inside a jar, its in the war directly in WEB-INF/classes: app.war\WEB-INF\classes\org\name\app\config\WebAppInitializer.class — Harley Jackson

Harley Jackson Harley Jackson · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-05T15:09:21

I'm not terribly happy about my solution, but it works for the time being. Websphere's support of web.xml-less initialization is a bit sub-standard. Even replies from their techs were unhelpful. In the end I had to move a bit of the spring initialization to the web.xml. I was still able to configure most of my JPA, security, and Web features via config files, but I had to give Spring a bit of kickstart. Below is my altered web.xml for anyone that is interested. Thanks everyone for the help and guidance.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
            xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
            xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
            xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
            http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd" 
         id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0">
    <!-- Map all errors to Spring MVC handler method. See CustomErrorController.generalError() -->
    <error-page>
        <location>/generalError</location>
    </error-page>
    <session-config>
      <session-timeout>15</session-timeout>
   </session-config>
   <display-name>app</display-name>
   <context-param>
      <param-name>contextClass</param-name>
      <param-value>
          org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext
      </param-value>
   </context-param>

    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>org.proj.config.ApplicationConfig 
                    org.proj.config.DefaultDataSourceConfig
                    org.proj.config.JpaConfig
                    org.proj.config.SecurityConfig
                    org.proj.config.MailConfig
                    org.proj.config.WebMvcConfig
       </param-value>
    </context-param>

    <!-- Bootstrap the root application context as usual using ContextLoaderListener -->
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>

   <servlet>
        <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>        
        <init-param>
          <param-name>contextClass</param-name>
          <param-value>org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext</param-value>
         </init-param>
          <!-- Again, config locations must consist of one or more comma- or space-delimited
               and fully-qualified @Configuration classes -->
          <init-param>
              <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
              <param-value>org.proj.config.ApplicationConfig 
                           org.proj.config.DefaultDataSourceConfig
                           org.proj.config.JpaConfig
                           org.proj.config.SecurityConfig
                           org.proj.config.MailConfig
                           org.proj.config.WebMvcConfig  
               </param-value>
          </init-param>
          <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
    <filter>
        <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
        <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
    </filter>

    <filter-mapping>
      <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
      <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
      <dispatcher>ERROR</dispatcher>
      <dispatcher>REQUEST</dispatcher>
    </filter-mapping>
</web-app>

Cannot deploy Spring App to Websphere

7 Answers