Error when deploying Spring Boot + JSF application to Websphere Application Server (Liberty profile) for Developers

Question

I'm having a problem when deploying a Spring Boot application with JSF integrated to a Websphere Application Development Liberty Profile Server for Developers. I'm using the official Docker image since right now I'm not concerned in installing the whole environment but using it for testing and development purposes: https://hub.docker.com/_/websphere-liberty/

When deploying the WAR, the console shows that the application was deployed successfully, apparently, but when going to the application URL the "Context Root Not Found" message is shown and in the console the following message is displayed in the output:

[ERROR   ] SRVE8500W: A servlet named WebSocketServlet can not be dynamically added because a servlet configuration with the same name already exists.  
[ERROR   ] CWWKH0047E: The WebSocket ServerEndpoints with the /springapp context path are not available for the client.

For deploying the application I changed my pom.xml file to:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>com.example</groupId>
    <artifactId>springapp</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>war</packaging>

    <name>springapp</name>
    <description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>1.3.0.M2</version>
        <relativePath /> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <java.version>1.7</java.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-rest</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
             <exclusions>
                <exclusion>
                    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
                </exclusion>
            </exclusions>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-security</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.h2database</groupId>
            <artifactId>h2</artifactId>
            <scope>compile</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>mysql</groupId>
            <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.primefaces</groupId>
            <artifactId>primefaces</artifactId>
            <version>5.2</version>
            <scope>compile</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.sun.faces</groupId>
            <artifactId>jsf-api</artifactId>
            <version>2.2.7</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>com.sun.faces</groupId>
            <artifactId>jsf-impl</artifactId>
            <version>2.2.7</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.el</groupId>
            <artifactId>el-api</artifactId>
            <version>2.2</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.glassfish.web</groupId>
            <artifactId>el-impl</artifactId>
            <version>2.2</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
            <artifactId>tomcat-embed-core</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
            <optional>true</optional>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
            <artifactId>tomcat-embed-logging-juli</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
            <optional>true</optional>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
            <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
            <optional>true</optional>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.webflow</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-faces</artifactId>
            <version>2.4.1.RELEASE</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-security-taglibs</artifactId>
             <version>3.2.7.RELEASE</version>

        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>

        </plugins>
    </build>

    <repositories>
        <repository>
            <id>spring-snapshots</id>
            <name>Spring Snapshots</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>true</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </repository>
        <repository>
            <id>spring-milestones</id>
            <name>Spring Milestones</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>false</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </repository>
    </repositories>
    <pluginRepositories>
        <pluginRepository>
            <id>spring-snapshots</id>
            <name>Spring Snapshots</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/snapshot</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>true</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </pluginRepository>
        <pluginRepository>
            <id>spring-milestones</id>
            <name>Spring Milestones</name>
            <url>https://repo.spring.io/milestone</url>
            <snapshots>
                <enabled>false</enabled>
            </snapshots>
        </pluginRepository>
    </pluginRepositories>
</project>

Also as instructed in this Spring blog post https://spring.io/blog/2014/03/07/deploying-spring-boot-applications, I changed the entry point to:

@SpringBootApplication
public class SpringApp extends SpringBootServletInitializer {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(applicationClass, args);
    }

    @Override
    protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder application) {
        return application.sources(applicationClass);
    }

    private static Class<SpringApp> applicationClass = SpringApp.class;

I believe this is because there's still some Tomcat libraries are conflicting with the process although they are already excluded from the pom file. Also, somewhat related to the question, how can I use my versions of the JSF implementation and not the ones provided by WAS? or should I better use their implementation's version?

Regards.

Answer 1

I could finally deploy the project successfully by making the following changes:

• The POM remained the same.
• In the main class I had a jsfConfigureListener method which had to be commented out.
• I changed the entry methods in the main class to:

SpringApp.java:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    SpringApplication.run(SpringApp.class, args);
}

@Override
protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder application) { 
     return application.sources(SpringApp.class);
}