Apache axis logging - ClassCastException while using it inside a Jira plugin

Question

My Jira 5.0 plugin is broken with the following exception:

java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        ...
Caused by: java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
    at org.apache.axis.description.OperationDesc.<clinit>(OperationDesc.java:65)
    at com.xyz.germander.AddTestTrackLinkDialogAction.doConfirm(AddTestTrackLinkDialogAction.java:23)
    ... 148 more
Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: org.apache.commons.logging.impl.SLF4JLogFactory cannot be cast to org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory
    at org.apache.axis.components.logger.LogFactory.getLogFactory(LogFactory.java:41)
    at org.apache.axis.components.logger.LogFactory.<clinit>(LogFactory.java:33)
    ... 150 more

For reference, this is the method throwing the ClassCastException:

private static final org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory getLogFactory() {
    return (org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory)
        AccessController.doPrivileged(
            new PrivilegedAction() {
                public Object run() {
                    return DiscoverSingleton.find(org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory.class,
                                   org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory.FACTORY_PROPERTIES,
                                   org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory.FACTORY_DEFAULT);
                }
            });
}

... for further reference, org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory.FACTORY_DEFAULT is "org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl", and FACTORY_PROPERTIES is supposed to be the name of the properties file to search for, which in my org.apache.commons.logging jar is "commons-logging.properties".

I've tried creating a commons-logging.properties file in the resource dir of the plugin; that file contains this:

priority=1
org.apache.commons.logging.Log=org.apache.commons.logging.impl.LogFactoryImpl

... but it seems to get ignored since getLogFactory() still gets SLF4JLogFactory and fails to cast it. So it looks like:

• This commons-logging.properties file needs to be somewhere else
• I need to set the logging class to be something else
• The project is otherwise misconfigured, maybe at the Jira level or maybe at the plugin or maybe Maven or... I don't even know

I'm pretty stumped, and would appreciate any guidance.

There is a similar question here, except that poster was getting the same exception in getLogFactory from the initialization of org.apache.axis.attachments.AttachmentsImpl instead of org.apache.axis.description.OperationDesc. (Also a Confluence plugin, not Jira.) Nobody responded there, though.

Answer 1

Discoveries: Atlassian forked the axis library and Jira now uses axis-1.3-atlassian-1 and not the latest axis-1.4 from Apache; axis-1.3-atlassian-1 uses the 1.0.4 version of commons-logging, not 1.1.1 like axis-1.4.

Changing the dependency of the plugin from axis-1.4 to axis-1.3-atlassian-1 solved the problem. It is my suspicion that SLF4JLogFactory could cast to org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory in 1.0.4 but not 1.1.1, but I haven't tested it.

If in Jira, be sure to give the scope of the dependency as "provided" or you'll run in to problems due to stuff being loaded twice. Here's a pom snippet:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>axis</groupId>
        <artifactId>axis</artifactId>
        <version>1.3-atlassian-1</version>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

Answer 2

Including axis-1.3-atlassian-1 only results

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.axis.transport.http.AdminServlet

Due to my application needs AdminServlet which is included in appache axis library. Finally when I included both it works fine with me.

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.axis</groupId>
        <artifactId>axis</artifactId>
        <version>1.4</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>axis</groupId>
        <artifactId>axis</artifactId>
        <version>1.3-atlassian-1</version>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>