Load classes in WEB-INF/classes via a Tomcat Context LifecycleListener

Question

I have a requirement to load a given class via a . I'm trying read class annotations like @WebService that are mentioned in classes. But, I'm getting ClassNotFoundException since the classloader of org.apache.catalina.LifecycleListener which is the tomcat classloader cannot load classes in a webapp. Only the webapp classloader can do that.

How I can get around this issue? Should I try to load the jar file separately, and read the classes?

Answer 1

Tomcat expects this class to be available in the {catalina.base}/lib (lib directory in the tomcat installation folder).