Forcing Glassfish4 to use javax.faces-2.2.6.jar as module per domain using Maven pom.xml?

Question

Due to a bug in Mojarra 2.2.0 I'd like to use javax.faces-2.2.6.jar with Glassfish 4. It does work if I replace the existing /opt/glassfish4/glassfish/modules/javax.faces.jar but that would affect all apps in all domains.

I tried putting it at least in Glassfish's modules/endorsed/ directory but that had no effect.

Is it possible to replace the JSF implementation using Maven's pom.xml for just one application?

Answer 1

You can, of course, simply place the new javax.faces dependency within the pom.xml above your glassfish dependency to build your app. But this will not prevent someone from deploying to a non-customized glassfish install.

To prevent the application from running at all, you're going to have to do a library version check within a Filter and throw a ServletException if it doesn't match the expected version. This won't prevent a deployment, but this is the next most intrusive option since it all requests will respond with a ServletException.

For example:

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.faces.application.ResourceHandler;
import javax.faces.context.FacesContext;
import javax.servlet.DispatcherType;
import javax.servlet.Filter;
import javax.servlet.FilterChain;
import javax.servlet.FilterConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;
import javax.servlet.annotation.WebFilter;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;

@WebFilter(value = "/*", dispatcherTypes = { DispatcherType.REQUEST, DispatcherType.FORWARD })
public class RelativePathFacesFilter implements Filter {

    private static String EXPECTED_FACES_VERSION = "2.2.6";

    private String facesVersion;
    private boolean correctVersion;

    @Override
    public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException {
        facesVersion = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getClass().getPackage().getImplementationVersion();
        correctVersion = EXPECTED_FACES_VERSION.equals(facesVersion);
    }

    @Override
    public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {
        if (!correctVersion) {
            throw new ServletException("Expected Faces version=" + EXPECTED_FACES_VERSION + ", but instead got " + facesVersion);
        }

        chain.doFilter(request, response);
    }

    @Override
    public void destroy() {
    }

}