Spring FatalBeanException

Question

I have a Spring MVC app, that is configured as shown below:

<context:component-scan base-package="com.mkyong.controller">
        <context:exclude-filter type="regex"
            expression="com.mkyong.controller.Movie.*" />
    </context:component-scan>

    <mvc:annotation-driven />

    <!-- Bean to show you Di in GAE, via Spring, also init the MovieController -->
    <bean class="com.mkyong.controller.MovieController">
        <property name="message">
            <value>Hello World</value>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <bean
        class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix">
            <value>/pages/</value>
        </property>
        <property name="suffix">
            <value>.jsp</value>
        </property>
    </bean>

</beans>

I have all required JARs inside WEB-INF/lib directory. This throws the following error (posting full stack trace):

    Apr 11, 2014 10:58:50 PM com.google.apphosting.utils.jetty.JettyLogger warn
WARNING: failed JettyContainerService$ApiProxyHandler@193f604a: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/springframework/beans/FatalBeanException
Apr 11, 2014 10:58:50 PM com.google.apphosting.utils.jetty.JettyLogger warn
WARNING: Error starting handlers
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/springframework/beans/FatalBeanException
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:760)
    at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:142)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:455)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$100(URLClassLoader.java:73)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:367)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:361)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:360)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:424)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.IsolatedAppClassLoader.loadClass(IsolatedAppClassLoader.java:216)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357)
    at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredConstructors0(Native Method)
    at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredConstructors(Class.java:2658)
    at java.lang.Class.getConstructor0(Class.java:2964)
    at java.lang.Class.newInstance(Class.java:403)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebXmlConfiguration.newListenerInstance(WebXmlConfiguration.java:650)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebXmlConfiguration.initListener(WebXmlConfiguration.java:631)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebXmlConfiguration.initWebXmlElement(WebXmlConfiguration.java:368)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebXmlConfiguration.initialize(WebXmlConfiguration.java:289)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebXmlConfiguration.configure(WebXmlConfiguration.java:222)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebXmlConfiguration.configureWebApp(WebXmlConfiguration.java:180)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.startContext(WebAppContext.java:1247)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.doStart(ContextHandler.java:517)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.doStart(WebAppContext.java:467)
    at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:50)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.doStart(HandlerWrapper.java:130)
    at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:50)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.doStart(HandlerWrapper.java:130)
    at org.mortbay.jetty.Server.doStart(Server.java:224)
    at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:50)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.JettyContainerService.startContainer(JettyContainerService.java:254)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.AbstractContainerService.startup(AbstractContainerService.java:305)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.AutomaticInstanceHolder.startUp(AutomaticInstanceHolder.java:26)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.AbstractModule.startup(AbstractModule.java:79)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.Modules.startup(Modules.java:97)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerImpl.doStart(DevAppServerImpl.java:255)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerImpl.access$000(DevAppServerImpl.java:47)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerImpl$1.run(DevAppServerImpl.java:213)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerImpl$1.run(DevAppServerImpl.java:211)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerImpl.start(DevAppServerImpl.java:211)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerMain$StartAction.apply(DevAppServerMain.java:277)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.util.Parser$ParseResult.applyArgs(Parser.java:48)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerMain.run(DevAppServerMain.java:219)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerMain.main(DevAppServerMain.java:210)
Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.beans.FatalBeanException
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:372)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:361)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:360)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:424)
    at com.google.appengine.tools.development.IsolatedAppClassLoader.loadClass(IsolatedAppClassLoader.java:216)
    at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357)
    ... 46 more

Any help shall be appreciated.

Answer 1

I had this problem and it was caused by the fact that the class under test is a standalone Java program with a main() method and a constructor that explicitly instantiates a Spring context with:

context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml");

... AND it was annotated with '@Component'. So when the the above statement executed, Spring scanned the package for annotated classes, and tried to reinstantiate the same class that was currently being constructed. I fixed it by removing the annotation.

I have no explanation for the stack trace which complains that it cannot find the Exception class, except that perhaps, when Spring is doing its context building, the classpath is different from that of the main class, and this classpath does not contain org.springframework.beans.

Answer 2

It seems you don't have the spring-beans jars in WEB-INF/lib. Can you add this jar to the classpath and retry. If it does not work can you post the full list of jars in WEB-INF/lib.

To find which jar contains a given missing class, check using sites such as grepcode.com, for examples this is the report of jars containing FatalBeanException.