Neo4j with SpringRestGraphDatabase - getting class not found exception

Question

I've built a new project using Spring data graph for Neo4J. I'm using Maven.

Everything works fine with embedded database, but when I'm trying to set a database on remote server using REST I'm getting:

    java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.data.neo4j.rest.SpringRestGraphDatabase

I saw a post from about one year ago, but with no solution - at least not one that works for me... In this post they referred aspectJ which indeed I use.

Is anyone familiar with this? does anyone have a working configuration example?

I really tried a L-O-T of different configurations, based on different posts in different forums and guides. This is my last one - I'll just specify that I also have other POMs and all of them are grouped by a parent POM (this is a bug project).

This is the bean definition:

        <!-- Neo4j configuration (creates Neo4jTemplate) -->
        <datagraph:config graphDatabaseService="neo4JRestGraphDatabase" />

           <!-- With this uncommented - it works great -->
        <!--datagraph:config storeDirectory="data/graph.db" /-->

And this is the project's POM:

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.vo.insight</groupId>
    <artifactId>content-insights-model-processed</artifactId>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>content-insights-model-processed</name>
    <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>

    <parent>
        <artifactId>content-insights-parent</artifactId>
        <groupId>com.vo.insight</groupId>
        <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
        <relativePath>../content-insights-parent/pom.xml</relativePath>
    </parent>


    <properties>
        <neo4j-rest-graphdb.version>2.0.0-M06</neo4j-rest-graphdb.version>
        <neo4j.version>1.8.M06</neo4j.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.vo.insight</groupId>
            <artifactId>content-insights-common</artifactId>
            <version>${project.version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <!-- Neo4J -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-data-neo4j</artifactId>
            <version>3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT</version>
            <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.neo4j</groupId>
                    <artifactId>neo4j</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.neo4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>neo4j-rest-graphdb</artifactId>
            <version>${neo4j-rest-graphdb.version}</version>
            <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.neo4j</groupId>
                    <artifactId>neo4j-kernel</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.neo4j</groupId>
                    <artifactId>neo4j-lucene-index</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.neo4j.app</groupId>
            <artifactId>neo4j-server</artifactId>
            <version>${neo4j.version}</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
            <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
                    <artifactId>log4j-over-slf4j</artifactId>
                </exclusion>

                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.neo4j</groupId>
                    <artifactId>neo4j</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.mortbay.jetty</groupId>
                    <artifactId>jetty</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>com.sun.jersey</groupId>
                    <artifactId>jersey-server</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
                    <artifactId>jackson-jaxrs</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
                    <artifactId>jackson-mapper-asl</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>de.huxhorn.lilith</groupId>
                    <artifactId>de.huxhorn.lilith.3rdparty.rrd4j</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>com.sun.jersey.contribs</groupId>
                    <artifactId>jersey-multipart</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.apache.felix</groupId>
                    <artifactId>org.apache.felix.main</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.apache.felix</groupId>
                    <artifactId>org.apache.felix.fileinstall</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
                    <artifactId>slf4j-jdk14</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>

        <!-- Do not remove this although we are not using Hibernate! this is needed 
            for Neo4J -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
            <artifactId>hibernate-validator</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-security-web</artifactId>
            <version>3.1.4.RELEASE</version>
        </dependency>

        <!-- Cassandra Client -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>me.prettyprint</groupId>
            <artifactId>hector-core</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>me.prettyprint</groupId>
            <artifactId>hector-object-mapper</artifactId>
            <version>3.0-04</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.cassandra</groupId>
            <artifactId>cassandra-all</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.thrift</groupId>
            <artifactId>libthrift</artifactId>
        </dependency>


        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>log4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.projectlombok</groupId>
            <artifactId>lombok</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-orm</artifactId>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
    </build>
    <!-- this profile is for ci build mode. to activate it use -Pci flag -->
    <profiles>
        <profile>
            <id>ci</id>
            <build>
                <plugins>
                    <plugin>
                        <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                        <artifactId>aspectj-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                        <version>1.0</version>
                        <configuration>
                            <outxml>true</outxml>
                            <aspectLibraries>
                                <aspectLibrary>
                                    <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
                                    <artifactId>spring-aspects</artifactId>
                                </aspectLibrary>
                                <aspectLibrary>
                                    <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
                                    <artifactId>spring-data-neo4j</artifactId>
                                </aspectLibrary>
                            </aspectLibraries>
                            <source>1.6</source>
                            <target>1.6</target>
                        </configuration>
                        <executions>
                            <execution>
                                <goals>
                                    <goal>compile</goal>
                                    <goal>test-compile</goal>
                                </goals>
                            </execution>
                        </executions>
                        <dependencies>
                            <dependency>
                                <groupId>org.aspectj</groupId>
                                <artifactId>aspectjrt</artifactId>
                            </dependency>
                            <dependency>
                                <groupId>org.aspectj</groupId>
                                <artifactId>aspectjtools</artifactId>
                            </dependency>
                        </dependencies>
                    </plugin>
                </plugins>
            </build>
        </profile>
    </profiles>
</project>

Thanks for your help!

Carmel

Answer 1

Eventualy, the problem was the definition of my neo4JRestGraphDatabase (which unfortunately I haven't pasted here...).

It was:

<bean id="graphDatabaseService" class="org.springframework.data.neo4j.rest.RestGraphDatabase">
        <constructor-arg value="http://localhost:7474/db/data/" />
    </bean>

Instead of:

<bean id="graphDatabaseService" class="org.springframework.data.neo4j.rest.SpringRestGraphDatabase">
        <constructor-arg value="http://localhost:7474/db/data/" />
    </bean>

Now I have 'Connection Refused' problem, but this is another issue.

Regarding the dependencies, the dependencies that geceo mentioned above are indeed enough.

Thanks for anyone that tried to help!

Carmel

Answer 2

I think you don't want to use "org.neo4j" dependencies if you use Spring Data. I'm not an expert but my current project works with only these:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-data-neo4j</artifactId>
    <version>${org.springframework.data-version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-data-neo4j-rest</artifactId>
    <version>${org.springframework.data-version}</version>
</dependency>

Answer 3

I think you need to include the org.springframework.data.spring-data-neo4j-rest artifact, not just the org.neo4j.neo4j-rest-graph-db.

Also, you're mixing versions pretty freely

• spring-data-neo4j 3.0 snapshot
• neo4j-rest-graphdb 2.0 milestone
• neo4j 1.8 milestone (you sure you don't mean to use 2.0 M6 here also?)
• a long list of exclusions
• explicit dependencies on spring-security-web 3.1.4 and spring-orm

I don't know the relevant dependencies and compatibilities for SDN 3, and there isn't necessarily anything wrong with mixing it up a bit, but if you get ClassNotFoundException or NoClassDefFoundError with a pom like that, you may want to look at your dependency tree, for instance by running mvn dependency:tree -Dverbose in your project root, to see if there are conflicting versions causing some dependencies to be silently excluded.