How to use OmniFaces 1.6 in two WARs in one EAR?

Question

JBoss 7.1, OmniFaces 1.6, Eclipse Kepler, CDI 1.0

I have found the following situation with new Omnifaces 1.6, when I updated from OmniFaces 1.5 to OmniFaces 1.6. I suppose it has something to do with new interesting CDI features of OmniFaces 1.6.

I have two JSF based WAR projects in one EAR archive, both projects have OmniFaces as dependency and they both will be deployed. In deployment, OmniFaces 1.6 ends up in /WEB-INF/lib of both WAR projects. At start of JBoss the IllegalArgumentException was thrown.

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Registering converter 'class org.omnifaces.converter.ListConverter' failed, duplicates converter ID 'omnifaces.ListConverter' of other converter 'class org.omnifaces.converter.ListConverter'.
    at org.omnifaces.cdi.converter.ConverterExtension.processConverters(ConverterExtension.java:78)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
    at org.jboss.weld.util.reflection.SecureReflections$13.work(SecureReflections.java:264)
    at org.jboss.weld.util.reflection.SecureReflectionAccess.run(SecureReflectionAccess.java:52)
    at org.jboss.weld.util.reflection.SecureReflectionAccess.runAsInvocation(SecureReflectionAccess.java:137)
    at org.jboss.weld.util.reflection.SecureReflections.invoke(SecureReflections.java:260)
    at org.jboss.weld.introspector.jlr.WeldMethodImpl.invokeOnInstance(WeldMethodImpl.java:170)
    at org.jboss.weld.introspector.ForwardingWeldMethod.invokeOnInstance(ForwardingWeldMethod.java:51)
    at org.jboss.weld.injection.MethodInjectionPoint.invokeOnInstanceWithSpecialValue(MethodInjectionPoint.java:154)
    at org.jboss.weld.event.ObserverMethodImpl.sendEvent(ObserverMethodImpl.java:241)
    at org.jboss.weld.event.ObserverMethodImpl.sendEvent(ObserverMethodImpl.java:229)
    at org.jboss.weld.event.ObserverMethodImpl.notify(ObserverMethodImpl.java:207)
    at org.jboss.weld.manager.BeanManagerImpl.notifyObservers(BeanManagerImpl.java:569)
    at org.jboss.weld.manager.BeanManagerImpl.fireEvent(BeanManagerImpl.java:559)
    at org.jboss.weld.bootstrap.events.AbstractContainerEvent.fire(AbstractContainerEvent.java:60)
    at org.jboss.weld.bootstrap.events.AbstractDefinitionContainerEvent.fire(AbstractDefinitionContainerEvent.java:38)
    at org.jboss.weld.bootstrap.events.ProcessManagedBeanImpl.fire(ProcessManagedBeanImpl.java:30)
    at org.jboss.weld.bootstrap.AbstractBeanDeployer.deploy(AbstractBeanDeployer.java:123)
    at org.jboss.weld.bootstrap.BeanDeployment.deployBeans(BeanDeployment.java:204)
    at org.jboss.weld.bootstrap.WeldBootstrap.deployBeans(WeldBootstrap.java:344)
    at org.jboss.as.weld.WeldContainer.start(WeldContainer.java:82)
    at org.jboss.as.weld.services.WeldService.start(WeldService.java:76)
    at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.startService(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1811)
    at org.jboss.msc.service.ServiceControllerImpl$StartTask.run(ServiceControllerImpl.java:1746)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:895)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:918)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)

If I remove one WAR project, then the exception dissapears and I can use the other WAR project in EAR.

Is it possible to use OmniFaces 1.6 in more as one project, and deploy to JBoss 7.1.1 in one EAR?

Answer 1

This bug has been fixed in 1.6.1. There's quite a story behind this bug, so I just wrote a blog on that: CDI behaved unexpectedly in EAR, so OmniFaces 1.6.1 released!

Summarized: CDI context isn't WAR-wide, but EAR-wide. As to the particular exception you faced, it's because there was only one CDI ConverterExtension being loaded from one WAR which is then applied EAR-wide and thus processing all @FacesConverter classes from both WARs instead of the WAR where the CDI extension was being loaded from.

Note that this is not a problem in OmniFaces. This is a problem in the way how CDI works in EARs.

---

Update: as per issue WELD-2143 this peculiar problem has finally been fixed in Weld 2.3.5. I have tested it in a patched WildFly 10.0.0 and confirmed that all OmniFaces CDI features which depend on an Extension, the @ViewScoped, @Eager and @Param work again in both WARs in a single EAR.

So, if you struggle with using aforementioned OmniFaces CDI features in an EAR with multiple WARs, make sure you upgrade Weld to at least version 2.3.5. The problem remains open in OpenWebBeans.