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Spring-Boot Components from other jar are not in context

I have following situation. JDK 17, Spring-Boot: 2.6.2. A gradle multi-project. One project is a library (java-library, no spring boot plugin). Another project is a spring boot application with spring boot plugin. Generally, the spring dependency management plugin is not used, gradle platform concept is used instead. Application project includes dependency to library project per "implementation(project(':.."
Library:
Library project and spring boot application project have different packages.
like:
library root package is a.b.c and application root package is a.b.d
Library project has in root package of the package hierarchy a configuration class (for example a.b.c.LibraryConfig) which is annotated with #Configuration annotation and with #ComponentScan annotation, which has attribute "basePackageClass" pointing to this configuration class:
#Configuration
#ComponentScan(basePackageClass = LibraryConfig.class)
public class LibraryConfig {
Inside of library hierarchy (so in packages a.b.c.*) are services and rest controllers.
Application:
Application has in root package of the package hierarchy (for example in a.b.d) application class and in sub-package "config" it has configuration class (would be for example a.b.d.config.AppConfig), which imports the configuration class from library:
#Configuration
#Import(a.b.c.LibraryConfig.class)
public class AppConfig {
Problem:
Classes from the library are there in runtime - we are able to load them.
No any component of the library is in context (not registered), neither services nor rest controllers.
What are we missing?
We have tried different constellations of imports and scans. Also added component scan to application class and set there particular packages. Nothing helped.

The problem was, that the main application was using spring boot indexing annotation processor and library - not. So after enabling the annotation processor for library problem was solved.

Possible to ignore configuration classes on the classpath?

I have a Spring Boot application that works as expected when ran with embedded tomcat, but I noticed that if I try to run it from an existing tomcat instance that I'm using with a previous project then it fails with a NoClassDefFoundError for a class that I don't use anywhere in my application.
I noticed in the /lib directory I had a single jar that contained a few Spring annotated classes, so as a test I cleaned out the /lib directory which resolved the issue. My assumption is that Spring is seeing some of the configurations/beans/imports on the classpath due to them existing in the /lib directory and either trying to autoconfigure something on its own, or is actually trying to instantiate some of these classes.
So then my question is - assuming I can't always fully control the contents of everything on the classpath, how can I prevent errors like this from occurring?
EDIT
For a little more detail - the class not being found is DefaultCookieSerializer which is part of the spring-session-implementation dependency. It is pulled into one of the classes in the jar located in /lib, but it is not any part of my application.

Check for features provided by #EnableAutoConfiguration. You can explicitly configure set of auto-configuration classes for your application. This tutorial can be a good starting point.

You can remove the #SpringBootApplication annotation from the main class and replace it with an #ComponentScan annotation and an #Import annotation that explicitly lists only the configuration classes you want to load. For example, in a Spring boot MVC app that uses metrics, web client, rest template, Jackson, etc, I was able to replace the #SpringBootApplication annotation with below code and get it working exactly as it was before, with all functional tests passing:
#Import({ MetricsAutoConfiguration.class,
InfluxMetricsExportAutoConfiguration.class,
ServletWebServerFactoryAutoConfiguration.class,
DispatcherServletAutoConfiguration.class,
WebMvcAutoConfiguration.class,
JacksonAutoConfiguration.class,
WebClientAutoConfiguration.class,
RestTemplateAutoConfiguration.class,
RefreshAutoConfiguration.class,
ValidationAutoConfiguration.class
})
#ComponentScan

The likely culprit of mentioned exception are incompatible jars on the classpath.
As we don't know with what library you have the issue we cant tell you the exact reason, but the situation looks like that:
One of Spring-Boot autoconfiguration classes is being triggered by the presence of class on the classpath
Trigerred configuration tries to create some bean of class that is not present in the jar you have (but it is in the specific version mentioned in the Spring BOM)
Version incompatibilities may also cause MethodNotFound exceptions.
That's one of the reasons why it is good practice not to run Spring Boot applications inside the container (make jar not war), but as a runnable jar with an embedded container.
Even before Spring Boot it was preferred to take account of libraries being present on runtime classpath and mark them as provided inside your project. Having different versions of the library on a classpath may cause weird ClassCastExceptions where on both ends names match, but the rest doesn't.
You could resolve specific cases by disabling autoconfiguration that causes your issue. You can do that either by adding exclude to your #SpringBootApplication or using a property file.
Edit:
If you don't use very broad package scan (or use package name from outside of your project in package scan) in your Spring Boot application it is unlikely that Spring Boot simply imports configuration from the classpath.
As I have mentioned before it is rather some autoconfiguration that is being triggered by existence of a class in the classpath.
Theoretical solution:
You could use maven shade plugin to relocate all packages into your own package space: see docs.
The problems is you'd have face:
Defining very broad relocation pattern that would exclude JEE classes that need to be used so that container would know how to run your application.
Relocation most likely won't affect package names used as strings in the Spring Boot annotations (like annotations #PackageScan or #ConditionalOnClass). As far as I know it is not implemented yet. You'd have to implement that by yourself - maybe as some kind of shade plugin resource processor.
When relocating classes you'd have to replace package names in all relevant configuration located in the jars. Possibly also merge some of those.
You'd also have to take into account how libraries that you use, or spring uses use package names or files.
This is definitely not a trivial tasks with many traps ahead. But if done right, then it would possibly allow you to disregard what is on the containers classpath. Spring Boot would also look for classes in relocated packages, and you wouldn't have those in ordinary jars.

Spring-boot > implicitly auto register a 3rd party bean

This may be an impossible task, but here goes...
Is it possible to register a spring bean, by (ONLY) adding a jar to the classpath of a spring-boot application?
Scenario: I would like to create a non-intrusive plugin jar, which when imported into a spring-boot project's classpath, will automatically be picked up and provide a service (e.g. via a RestController).
Constraints
I don't want to change or reconfigure the existing spring-boot application (i.e. no additional scan paths or bean config).
I don't have any knowledge of the target spring-boot application's package structure/scan paths.
I guess I was hoping that by default Spring scan's its own package structure (i.e. org.springframework.** looking for the presence of database libs, etc) and I could piggy-back off that - I haven't had any luck (so far).
I've setup an example project in github, to further clarify/illustrate my example and attempts.
** Solution Addendum **
This bit that got it working, was to add the following file, which points to an #Configuration config file...
plugin-poc\src\main\resources\META-INF\spring.factories
org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.EnableAutoConfiguration=org.thirdpartyplugin.PluginConfiguration

I think in such cases you would try to add a spring auto configuration that is annotated with #ConditionalOnClass to be only evaluated if the given class is on the classpath. This class can register the bean and would just be evaluated if the conditional evaluates to true
Here is the relevant part of the spring boot documentation : Creating your own auto-configuration

Using Spring boot/cloud with Amazon AWS lambda does not inject values

I have an AWS lambda RequestHandler class which is invoked directly by AWS. Eventually I need to get it working with Spring Boot because I need it to be able to retrieve data from Spring Cloud configuration server.
The problem is that the code works if I run it locally from my own dev environment but fails to inject config values when deployed on AWS.
#Configuration
#EnableAutoConfiguration
#ComponentScan("my.package")
public class MyClass implements com.amazonaws.services.lambda.runtime.RequestHandler<I, O> {
public O handleRequest(I input, Context context) {
ApplicationContext applicationContext = new SpringApplicationBuilder()
.main(getClass())
.showBanner(false)
.web(false)
.sources(getClass())
.addCommandLineProperties(false)
.build()
.run();
log.info(applicationContext.getBean(SomeConfigClass.class).foo);
// prints cloud-injected value when running from local dev env
//
// prints "${path.to.value}" literal when running from AWS
// even though Spring Boot starts successfully without errors
}
}
#Configuration
public class SomeConfigClass {
#Value("${path.to.value}")
public String foo;
}
src/main/resources/bootstrap.yml:
spring:
application:
name: my_service
cloud:
config:
uri: http://my.server
failFast: true
profile: localdev
What have I tried:
using regular Spring MVC, but this doesn't have integration with #Value injection/Spring cloud.
using #PropertySource - but found out it doesn't support .yml files
verified to ensure the config server is serving requests to any IP address (there's no IP address filtering)
running curl to ensure the value is brought back
verified to ensure that .jar actually contains bootstrap.yml at jar root
verified to ensure that .jar actually contains Spring Boot classes. FWIW I'm using Maven shade plugin which packages the project into a fat .jar with all dependencies.
Note: AWS Lambda does not support environment variables and therefore I can not set anything like spring.application.name (neither as environment variable nor as -D parameter). Nor I can control the underlying classes which actually launch MyClass - this is completely transparent to the end user. I just package the jar and provide the entry point (class name), rest is taken care of.
Is there anything I could have missed? Any way I could debug this better?

After a bit of debugging I have determined that the issue is with using the Maven Shade plugin. Spring Boot looks in its autoconfigure jar for a META-INF/spring.factories jar see here for some information on this. In order to package a Spring Boot jar correctly you need to use the Spring Boot Maven Plugin and set it up to run during the maven repackage phase. The reason it works in your local IDE is because you are not running the Shade packaged jar. They do some special magic in their plugin to get things in the right spot that the Shade plugin is unaware of.
I was able to create some sample code that initially was not injecting values but works now that I used the correct plugin. See this GitHub repo to check out what I have done.
I did not connect it with Spring Cloud but now that the rest of the Spring Boot injection is working I think it should be straightforward.
As I mentioned in the comments you may want to consider just a simple REST call to get the cloud configuration and inject it yourself to save on the overhead of loading a Spring application with every request.
UPDATE: For Spring Boot 1.4.x you must provide this configuration in the Spring Boot plugin:
<configuration>
<layout>MODULE</layout>
</configuration>
If you do not then by default the new behavior of the plugin is to put all of your jars under BOOT-INF as the intent is for the jar to be executable and have the bootstrap process load it. I found this out while addressing adding a warning for the situation that was encountered here. See https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/issues/5465 for reference.

Spring Dependency Injection and Plugin Jar

I have web application running with a default impl of a backend service. One should be able to implement the interface and drop the jar into the plugins folder (which is not in the apps classpath). Once the server is restarted, the idea is to load the new jar into the classloader, and have it take part in dependency injection. I am using Spring DI using #Autowired. The new plugin service impl will have #Primary annotation. So given two impls of the interface, the primary should be loaded.
I got the jar loaded into the classloader and can invoke the impl manually. But I haven't been able to get to to participate in the Dependency Injection, and have it replace the default impl.
Here's a simplified example:
#Controller
public class MyController {
#Autowired
Service service;
}
//default.jar
#Service
DefaultService implements Service {
public void print() {
System.out.println("printing DefaultService.print()");
}
}
//plugin.jar not in classpath yet
#Service
#Primary
MyNewService implements Service {
public void print() {
System.out.println("printing MyNewService.print()");
}
}
//For lack of better place, I loaded the plugin jar from the ContextListener
public class PluginContextLoaderListener extends org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener {
#Override
protected void customizeContext(ServletContext servletContext,
ConfigurableWebApplicationContext wac) {
System.out.println("Init Plugin");
PluginManager pluginManager = PluginManagerFactory.createPluginManager("plugins");
pluginManager.init();
//Prints the MyNewService.print() method
Service service = (Service) pluginManager.getService("service");
service.print();
}
}
<listener>
<listener-class>com.plugin.PluginContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>
Even after I have loaded the jar into the classloader, DefaultService is still being injected as service. Any idea how I get the plugin jar to participate into the spring's DI lifecycle?
Edited:
To put it simply, I have a war file that has a few plugin jars in a plugins directory inside the war. Based on a value from a configuration file that the app looks at, when the app is started, I want to load that particular plugin jar and run the application with it. That way, I can distribute the war to anyone, and they can choose which plugin to run based on a config value without having to to repackage everything. This is the problem I am trying to solve.

It seems like all You need is to create the Spring ApplicationContext properly. I think it's possible without classpath mingling. What matters most are the locations of the Spring configuration files within the classpath. So put all Your plugin jar's into WEB-INF/lib and read on.
Let's start with the core module. We'll make it to create it's ApplicationContext from files located at classpath*:META-INF/spring/*-corecontext.xml.
Now we'll make all plugins to have their config files elsewhere. I.e. 'myplugin1' will have its config location like this: classpath*:META-INF/spring/*-myplugin1context.xml. And anotherplugin will have the configs at classpath*:META-INF/spring/*-anotherplugincontext.xml.
What You see is a convension. You can also use subdirectiries if You like:
core: classpath*:META-INF/spring/core/*.xml
myplugin1: classpath*:META-INF/spring/myplugin1/*.xml
anotherplugin: classpath*:META-INF/spring/anotherplugin/*.xml
What matters is that the locations have to be disjoint.
All that remains is to pass the right locations to the ApplicationContext creator. For web applications the right place for this would be to extend the ContextLoaderListener and override the method customizeContext(ServletContext, ConfigurableWebApplicationContext).
All that remains is to read Your config file (its location can be passed as servlet init parameter). Than You need to construct the list of config locations:
String locationPrefix = "classpath*:META-INF/spring/";
String locationSiffix = "/*.xml";
List<String> configLocations = new ArrayList<String>();
configLocations.add(locationPrefix + "core" + locationSiffix);
List<String> pluginsTurnedOn = getPluginsTurnedOnFromConfiguration();
for (String pluginName : pluginsTurnedOn) {
configLocations.add(locationPrefix + pluginName + locationSiffix);
}
applicationContext.setConfigLocations(configLocations.toArray(new String[configLocations.size()]));
This way You can easily manage what is and what is not loaded into Spring ApplicationContext.
Update:
To make it work there's one more hidden assumption I made that I'm about to explain now. The base package of the core module and each plugin should also be disjoint. That is i.e.:
com.mycompany.myapp.core
com.mycompany.myapp.myplugin1
com.mycompany.myapp.anotherplugin
This way each module can use <context:componet-scan /> (on equivalent in JavaConfig) easily to add classpath scanning for it's own classes only. The core module should not contain any package scanning of any plugin packages. The plugins should extend configuration of ApplicationContext to add their own packages to classpath scanning.

If you restart the server, I see no reason why you can't just add the JAR to the WEB-INF/lib and have it in the CLASSPATH. All the complication of a custom class loader and context listener goes away, because you treat it just like any other class under Spring's control.
If you do it this way because you don't want to open or modify a WAR, why not put it in the server /lib directory? Let the server class loader pick it up. This makes all plugin classes available to all deployed apps.
The answer depends on how important the separate /plugin directory is. If it's key to the solution, and you can't add the JAR to the server's /lib directory, then that's that. I've got nothing. But I think it'd be worthwhile to at least revisit the solution you have to make sure that it's the only way to accomplish what you want.