Richfaces 3.x under weblogic 8.1

Question

I have been developing a small project meant to run under weblogic 8.1. Richfaces according to documentation states that it supports weblogic 8.1.

Weblogic 8.1 uses servlet specification 2.3 with jsp 1.2 This has been working on my locally installed version of weblogic 8.1 but when deploying to the sparc server, I start running into trouble. I have worked through some of the initial headaches, but then I got an error 500 and couldnt get the details. But after some effort I have come out with this...

javax.servlet.ServletException: javax/servlet/jsp/JspContext
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.RequestDispatcherImpl.forward(RequestDispatcherImpl.java:344)
        at com.sun.faces.context.ExternalContextImpl.dispatch(ExternalContextImpl.java:346)
        at com.sun.faces.application.ViewHandlerImpl.renderView(ViewHandlerImpl.java:152)
        at org.ajax4jsf.application.ViewHandlerWrapper.renderView(ViewHandlerWrapper.java:108)
        at org.ajax4jsf.application.AjaxViewHandler.renderView(AjaxViewHandler.java:216)
        at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.RenderResponsePhase.execute(RenderResponsePhase.java:107)
        at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.phase(LifecycleImpl.java:245)
        at com.sun.faces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.render(LifecycleImpl.java:137)
        at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:214)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl$ServletInvocationAction.run(ServletStubImpl.java:1072)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletStubImpl.invokeServlet(ServletStubImpl.java:465)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.TailFilter.doFilter(TailFilter.java:28)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:27)
        at org.ajax4jsf.webapp.BaseXMLFilter.doXmlFilter(BaseXMLFilter.java:141)
        at org.ajax4jsf.webapp.BaseFilter.doFilter(BaseFilter.java:281)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:27)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.FilterChainImpl.doFilter(FilterChainImpl.java:27)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext$ServletInvocationAction.run(WebAppServletContext.java:6987)
        at weblogic.security.acl.internal.AuthenticatedSubject.doAs(AuthenticatedSubject.java:321)
        at weblogic.security.service.SecurityManager.runAs(SecurityManager.java:121)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.WebAppServletContext.invokeServlet(WebAppServletContext.java:3892)
        at weblogic.servlet.internal.ServletRequestImpl.execute(ServletRequestImpl.java:2766)
        at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.execute(ExecuteThread.java:224)
        at weblogic.kernel.ExecuteThread.run(ExecuteThread.java:183)

JspContext is not part of jsp 1.2 it's newer. I am thinking this exception is originally a ClassNotFoundException or something similar considering the message. There is no 'cause' attached to the exception.

Following are the jar files contained in my web-application.

antlr-2.7.6.jar
asm-1.5.3.jar
asm-attrs-1.5.3.jar
cglib-2.1_3.jar
commons-beanutils-1.6.jar
commons-collections-3.2.jar
commons-digester-1.5.jar
commons-lang-2.4.jar
commons-logging-1.0.3.jar
dom4j-1.6.1.jar
ehcache-1.2.3.jar
hibernate-3.2.4.sp1.jar
jsf-api-1.1_02.jar
jsf-impl-1.1_02.jar
jstl-1.0.jar
jta-1.1.jar
log4j-1.2.15.jar
richfaces-api-3.1.6.SR1.jar
richfaces-impl-3.1.6.SR1.jar
richfaces-ui-3.1.6.SR1.jar
xercesImpl-2.9.1.jar
xml-apis-1.3.04.jar

I'm running out of options, I'll be trying to figure out who has the dependency on the JspContext class... but if someone could give me some insight it would be greatly appreciated. Oh, I cannot make many changes to the production web-logic server. I'd prefer not to make any at all, chances are those changes will be denied

Oh this error occurs when attempting to view the page, so deployment is successful.

Answer 1

Ok, I have solved my problem. Not the way I wanted to but it's working (atleast to what I know right now).

After using google (again) I found a comment with someone mentioning using richfaces 3.0.1. Now I have seen many people say use version xxx even 3.3.x. After all I did get it working with 3.1.6 but on the windows version of weblogic (which could have possibly been tainted by some other weblogic version I have installed).

So I have modified my pom for maven to depend on:

            <groupId>org.richfaces</groupId>
            <artifactId>richfaces</artifactId>
            <version>3.0.1</version>

This is not optimal, but I geuss it works. Some taglibrary references needed changing, and packages changed to some extent.

I could post my project configuration for this if anyone ever needs it. Getting this all to work on weblogic 8.1 was not straight forward. But the reference documentation for 3.1.6 is to my knowledge incorrect by saying it support weblogic 8.1

Answer 2

jsp-api-2.1.jar contains the missing class, so you could try using it (either replace it in weblogic, or try in your /lib), but I can't predict what would happen.