Override Class loader "Parent First" - java

I have Java web application running on a web application server single node setup, in which I am using a liberary the I included in my Web-Inf and using in my code.
The issue is that I have another application that added its liberaries to the WebSphere parent lib folder, one of which are the same liberary I am using but with an older version, creating conflict and jamming my code.
The server class loader is configured Parent first unfourtunatly and I cannot change that fact. My question is, how can I make my app use my liberary, ignoring the one used by the class loader?

The solution is to move the conflicting package to a shared library, configure the library to use an isolated class loader, and associate that library with your application or module. The "isolated class loader" setting creates a separate parent-last class loader for the shared library, so you get that behavior targeted to only the artifacts that need it rather than having to apply it to the entire application or module.
https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSAW57_8.5.5/com.ibm.websphere.nd.multiplatform.doc/ae/tcws_sharedlib.html
I'm specifically referencing the "Use an isolated class loader for this shared library" setting.

If you can't change your application server setup there are basically three things you can do:
Downgrade your application dependency to lower version used by WebSphere server and keep it in sync. This is preferable as it's least hassle.
Shade the dependency during build to your own package to prevent package clash. This can be done with Maven Shade Plugin, see Relocating Classes usage example.
Write a new custom classloader to work around the problem.
I'd try them in 1 -> 2 -> 3 order. Option 3 is possible but is an error-prone nightmare. I'd rather deploy to another server than do it.

Related

How can I configure Quarkus to load an SPI implementation into a specific ClassLoader?

I am running into an issue deploying a Quarkus App that uses an SPI implementation injected by our deployment system.
In our pom, we specify the SPI interface (which calls to ServiceLoader.load(class) in it's static initializer). When we deploy the Quarkus app, we decompose the QuarkusRunner jar, extract the Main-Class from the MANIFEST and construct a command line similar to "java -cp ... io.quarkus.bootstrap.runner.QuarkusEntryPoint". The class path includes everything in quarkus-app/app, lib/boot and lib/main plus the SPI implementation we intend to use.
When we run the app, and try to use code that invokes our SPI ServiceLoader code, we get the following error:
java.util.ServiceConfigurationError: : not a subtype.
I read this as the ClassLoader used by Quarkus (which contains the SPI-interface) and the ClassLoader that loads the SPI-Implementation, are somehow not connected (i.e., isolated from one another).
Things of interest:
We are using Quarkus 1.13.2-Final
I have tried to make our SPI Interface a parentFirstArtifact (it has no dependencies), with no luck.
Looking at the code for QuarkusEntryPoint, it looks like it loads all the classes placed into quarkus/quarkus-application.dat, which is created during the maven build, into the Quarkus RunnerClassLoader, whose parent is the System ClassLoader. My assumption was items on the classpath were added to the System ClassLoader.
Question:
At this point, I am completely lost as to what is actually happening. How do I get my SPI-Implementation to work with Quarkus?
When using Quarkus's fast-jar, almost everything is loaded into the JVM via the RunnerClassLoader (the exceptions are the classloader itself, and a tiny number of supporting classes and utility libraries).
What you would consider the classpath (that is User code, code generated or transformed by Quarkus and dependencies) are indexed in the quarkus-application.dat file which is built at build time and cannot be modified.

JDBC driver not found (servlet, DAO, mariaDB) [duplicate]

I developer a web application using Java. When I deploy it to my application server (Jetty, Tomcat, JBoss, GlassFish, etc.) throws an error. I can see this error message in the stacktrace:
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException
Or
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError
What does this mean and how can I fix it?
What does this mean?
First, let's see the meaning of java.lang.ClassNotFoundException:
Thrown when an application tries to load in a class through its string name using:
The forName method in class Class.
The findSystemClass method in class ClassLoader.
The loadClass method in class ClassLoader.
but no definition for the class with the specified name could be found.
Usually, this happens when trying to open a connection manually in this form:
String jdbcDriver = "...'; //name of your driver
Class.forName(jdbcDriver);
Or when you refer to a class that belongs to an external library and strangely this class cannot be loaded when the application server tries to deploy the application.
Let's see the meaning of java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError (emphasis mine):
Thrown if the Java Virtual Machine or a ClassLoader instance tries to load in the definition of a class (as part of a normal method call or as part of creating a new instance using the new expression) and no definition of the class could be found.
The searched-for class definition existed when the currently executing class was compiled, but the definition can no longer be found.
The last part says it all: the class existed at compile time i.e. when I compiled the application through my IDE, but it is not available at runtime i.e. when the application is deployed.
how can I fix it?
In Java web applications, all third party libraries used by your application must go in WEB-INF/lib folder. Make sure that all the necessary libraries (jars) are placed there. You can check this easily:
- <webapp folder>
- WEB-INF
- lib
+ jar1
+ jar2
+ ...
- META-INF
- <rest of your folders>
This problem usually arises for JDBC connectivity jars (MySQL, Derby, MSSQL, Oracle, etc.) or web MVC frameworks libraries like JSF or Spring MVC.
Take into account that some third party libraries rely on other third party libraries, so you have to add all of them in WEB-INF/lib in order to make the application work. A good example of this is RichFaces 4 libraries, where you have to download and add the external libraries manually.
Note for Maven users: you should not experience these problems unless you have set the libraries as provided, test or system. If set to provided, you're responsible to add the libraries somewhere in the classpath. You can find more info about the dependency scopes here: Introduction to the Dependency Mechanism
In case the library must be shared among several applications that will be deployed on your application server e.g. MySQL connector for two applications, there's another alternative. Instead of deploying two war files each with their own MySQL connector library, place this library in the common library folder of the server application, this will enable the library to be in the classpath of all the deployed applications.
This folder vary from application server.
Tomcat 7/8: <tomcat_home>/lib
JBoss 7/Wildfly: <jboss_home>/standalone/lib
The class must exist under WEB-INF/classes or be inside a .jar file under WEB-INF/lib. Make sure it does.
Same problem happen with me.
Might be possible one of your libraries are using some classes internal which is not available
in your lib or maven dependency pom.xml.
Thats means you have analyze your error logs and identify these classes and then import all dependencies in maven or lib folder.
I have fixed this error by the same way.
because some of my libraries are using activation.jar and json.jar internally.

Websphere: Shared libraries in common classloader earlier on classpath than application modules, even with parent last policy

Background:
I have the following problem: I have several WAR files I need to have deployed on same Websphere server. The WAR files use libraries that depend on having a specific version of XMLSec regisered as the XML Signature Provider (with the Java Security class). Currently I bundle this library with each WAR file (since the WAR files also need to work standalone and on Tomcat's without any special shared library configuration etc.). Each WAR files registers the provider with Security.addProvider() in a ServerContextListener. But this causes problems in the multi-WAR setup, because if one WAR file does the registration with Security.addProvider) and another WAR files tries to fetch it using the XMLSignatureFactory class (which is actually a javax.* class contained inside the XMLSec JAR itself, but which ultimately calls back to the global provider list configured with Security.addProvider), then it causes a ClassCastException inside XMLSignatureFactory, because this class does a cast of what it gets from Security into to its own version of the provider classes, which doesn't work. The exact stack trace is as follows:
Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException:
org.apache.jcp.xml.dsig.internal.dom.DOMXMLSignatureFactory
incompatible with javax.xml.crypto.dsig.XMLSignatureFactory at
javax.xml.crypto.dsig.XMLSignatureFactory.findInstance(XMLSignatureFactory.java:202)
at
javax.xml.crypto.dsig.XMLSignatureFactory.getInstance(XMLSignatureFactory.java:292)
By the way this is not a case of conflict with different versions of XMLSec being in play or conflicts with Websphere's own version. There is only one version albeit it is loaded from different WAR's.
Of course the solution is to have the xmlsec library loaded with a common classloader so that there is only one version of the classes loaded that all WAR files see, which would avoid ClassCastExceptions etc.. But here is the rub: I also need to have each application loaded with the "parent last" policy - or rather, I need the JAR files inside each application to take precedence over Websphere's built-in version of the libraries (for instance Axis2 that I also include in the WAR filesetc.). Furter, I would prefer that I can keep the xmlsec library in each WAR files' WEB-INF/lib folder, so that the WAR files can still work stand-alone (i.e. in other environments which might not have the shared library configured etc.).
So basically I want to have a common class loader loading the XMLSec library, say, somewhere from disk. Let's denote that [SHARED XMLSEC]. Then I want each application classpath to ultimately appear like this:
App1: [SHARED XMLSEC][App1 WEB-inf/lib][Websphere libraries][JDK libraries]
App2: [SHARED XMLSEC][App2 WEB-inf/lib][Websphere libraries][JDK libraries]
etc.
In such a configuration it doesn't matter if App1+App2 themselves contain the XMLSec library since the shared one will take precedence so they will use the common one. At the same time, App1+App2 are still free to override other built-in Websphere libraries (Axis2).
Is it possible to realize this configuration and what options do I need to set? Do you see alternative ways to achieve the same objective?
Since you have a conflict between classes here, I would suggest going for isolated class loaders for each application. On the server side, setting the class loader policy to 'Multiple' should provide isolation between applications.
Once you have this set, configure class loading at the application level to the 'Parent last' configuration for both the applications.
The following Knowledge Center link has the relevant instructions [Steps 2,3 & 4 under the 'Procedure' section] :
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SSAW57_8.5.5/com.ibm.websphere.nd.multiplatform.doc/ae/trun_classload.html
[Note: The version of WAS in use is not specified in the question. The Knowledge Center link refers to version 8.5.5.]

Hibernate and Jersey dependency conflict (javassist) - can anyone explain how this works?

I'm currently using hibernate-4.1.4 and jersey-2.22. These have javassist-3.15 and javassist-3.18 respectively.
I included both hibernate and jersey in my project and to my surprise, there were no dependency conflicts between the said javassists.
I was wondering how Java tells hibernate to use 3.15 and how it tell jersey to use 3.18 since both are in the build path. Is one javassist not being used?
Follow up question: Let's say that javassist-3.15 and javassist-3.18 have a conflict with each other. How do I resolve this? Do I disable both javassists and include one externally?
EDIT: My app is a web app that runs on Tomcat 7. We don't use Maven/Gradle. We just configure the dependencies by putting the jars in the build path using Eclipse.
JAVA loads classes through ClassLoaders ... Many applications servers, as Tomcat or Wildfly, implement and use their own class loaders (not the regular ones of the common JDK) ... So you must check the Tomcat documentation to read about its classloading behaviour...
After saying that, is very likely that Tomcat is loading libraries in alphabetical order. I Explain...
Suppose that you use a class named: Dummy, and this class is contained at the libraries: dummy-1.0.jar and dummy-1.1.jar ... when the class Dummy is requested, the Tomcat ClassLoader search for that class definition, looking first at dummy-1.0.jar and later at dummy-1.1.jar ... given that dummy-1.0.jar contains that class, Tomcat stops looking a returns that class version ... If dummy-1.0.jar would not have the target class, the dummy-1.1.jar class version would be returned instead...
(I suggest to try this to validate the container behaivour, it's not so hard to implement)...
And yes, if javassist-3.15 and javassist-3.18 conflicts with each other, you should remove them and pick the javassist JAR more
suitable for both libraries (jersey and hibernate).
As thumb rule, I tend to pick the newest library (the one with greater version), but this scheme not always work...

Deploying 2 war files with common classes in JBoss

I have two war file app1.war and app2.war deployed in a single JBoss instance. Package names for java classes for both war files starts with com.myapp
To add further, there are some Classes that are common between the two apps while there are some that have same fully qualified class names but are different (Source Code has changed).
I want to know, if this could pose threat of any kind to the deployment scenario?
You could get class loading problems if your applications are not isolated, i.e. have their own class loading repository and class loaders. If you configure JBoss to isolate the applications from each other you should be fine (I don't know what is the default for your version but 4.2.3 that we use does not isolate apps by default).
To clarify that a bit:
If you have two classes with different implementations but the same FQCN you could get the wrong class from the class loader for the application that is loaded second. Even if the implementation was the same you could get class cast exceptions or other strange behavior if one app gets the class from the other app.
I had a similar situation with multiple apps.Look at my solution here
Best way is to isolate class loading for your application archives.
For JBoss 5.1.0 GA following worked for me.
Create jboss-classloading.xml file in WEB-INF folder.
Added following lines to this file
Here,
export-all="NON_EMPTY" => Makes sure the classes loaded for this app is not exported
import-all="true" => Imports and uses all of the class definition available.
parent-first="false" => If more than one class with same name is found, one defined under the application will be used first.
FYI. This also helped me embedding the log configuration of log4j in the application war file. Will need to place log4j.xml in WEB-INF/classes and have a log4j.jar in WEB-INF/lib folder.
There will be one class loader instance for each application or standalone module. In other words, classes in app1.war will be loaded in different class loader than the classes in app2.war. This is the default behavior of any Java EE server; So it really doesn't matter about having classes with the same package/names and/or different content. This is the default behavior of any Java EE server.
Having said that, if you tweak the class loader policy of the server or try to load classes (reflect) using anything other than Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader(), you could be asking for trouble.

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