Restful webservice with CXF error on tomcat

Question

I developed Restful webservice with CXF. It works fine in development. while I deploy war on tomcat, it does not work. it throw error on war startup.

Error log:

Dec 12, 2012 2:56:00 PM org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationContext log
SEVERE: StandardWrapper.Throwable
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'restContainer': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is org.apache.cxf.service.factory.ServiceConstructionException
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1422)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:518)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:455)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:293)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:222)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:290)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:192)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.preInstantiateSingletons(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:585)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.finishBeanFactoryInitialization(AbstractApplicationContext.java:895)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:425)
    at org.apache.cxf.transport.servlet.CXFServlet.createSpringContext(CXFServlet.java:160)
    at org.apache.cxf.transport.servlet.CXFServlet.loadBus(CXFServlet.java:74)
    at org.apache.cxf.transport.servlet.CXFNonSpringServlet.init(CXFNonSpringServlet.java:71)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.loadServlet(StandardWrapper.java:1206)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.load(StandardWrapper.java:1026)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.loadOnStartup(StandardContext.java:4421)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4734)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:799)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:779)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:601)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:943)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWARs(HostConfig.java:778)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployApps(HostConfig.java:504)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.start(HostConfig.java:1317)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:324)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:142)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1065)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.start(StandardHost.java:840)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1057)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.start(StandardEngine.java:463)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.start(StandardService.java:525)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.start(StandardServer.java:754)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:595)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:289)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:414)
Caused by: org.apache.cxf.service.factory.ServiceConstructionException
    at org.apache.cxf.jaxrs.JAXRSServerFactoryBean.create(JAXRSServerFactoryBean.java:201)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.invokeCustomInitMethod(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1546)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.invokeInitMethods(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1487)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1419)
    ... 38 more
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at org.apache.cxf.ws.discovery.listeners.WSDiscoveryServerListener.startServer(WSDiscoveryServerListener.java:64)
    at org.apache.cxf.bus.managers.ServerLifeCycleManagerImpl.startServer(ServerLifeCycleManagerImpl.java:61)
    at org.apache.cxf.endpoint.ServerImpl.start(ServerImpl.java:146)
    at org.apache.cxf.jaxrs.JAXRSServerFactoryBean.create(JAXRSServerFactoryBean.java:192)
    ... 45 more
Dec 12, 2012 2:56:00 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext loadOnStartup
SEVERE: Servlet /samplews threw load() exception

cxf-servlet.xml

<beans 
    xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
 xmlns:beans='http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans'
 xmlns:jaxrs="http://cxf.apache.org/jaxrs"
 xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
 xsi:schemaLocation="
 http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans 
 http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
 http://cxf.apache.org/jaxrs 
 http://cxf.apache.org/schemas/jaxrs.xsd
 http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
 http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

  <jaxrs:server id="restContainer" address="/" >
            <jaxrs:serviceBeans>
        <ref bean="webServiceImpl" />
     </jaxrs:serviceBeans>  

        </jaxrs:server>

     <bean id="webServiceImpl" class="com.sample.services.rest.WebServiceImpl" />
     <bean id="jaxbProvider" class="org.apache.cxf.jaxrs.provider.JAXBElementProvider"/>  


</beans> 

Answer 1

If it works fine in development, I would be concerned about using the same version of JDK, Spring, CXF and Tomcat on dev. environment as used on Tomcat to first replicate the issue in dev. You shouldn't perform debugging in production.

I also got the same NullPointerException recently and the issue was a version mismatch between the four things mentioned above. Do watch out for them.