Calling a Java component that calls (consumes) a web service

[Jill_of_all_trades]

We are having a problem calling a Java component that calls (consumes) a web service. The component has a stand alone test facility, and when run stand alone it always succeeds. When we call the component from within ColdFusion (same parameters are being used as in the stand alone case) it dies at the point where it tries to instantiate the web service object. The stack trace is:

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException

at org.apache.axis.client.Service.getEngineConfiguration(Service.java:801)

at org.apache.axis.client.Service.getAxisClient(Service.java:143)

at org.apache.axis.client.Service.<init>(Service.java:152)

at soapapi.TokServiceLocator.<init>(TokServiceLocator.java:12)

at com.*******.viewlinkApp.rip.RipQueryProvider.executeIndexRequest(RipQueryProvider.java:207)

... 40 more

Apache Axis is the web services implementation that is being called by our java component.

Our investigation of this has found that the NullPointerException is being thrown when Apache Axis is initializing itself and has been unable to find an EngineConfiguration class. We suspect that this is because ColdFusion has altered the web service configuration mechanisms to support consuming web services directly from CF. Unfortunately we need to call the web service from within the Java component. Does anyone have information on how to do this? We don't have any need to consume any web services directly from ColdFusion so a loss of that ability is a non-issue.

Thanks!

[BKBK]

Could we see how you make the call?

[Jill_of_all_trades]

In the cf code, I call java classes that are located in a .jar file in the D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib folder.

This is the reply from the person who is coding the java:

We just call the parameterless constructor of the API that was generated for us from the WSDL file:

TokServiceLocator tokServiceLoc = new TokServiceLocator();

Inside the generated code is:

public TokServiceLocator() {

}

This would do nothing execpt the generated class is a subclass:

class TokServiceLocator extends org.apache.axis.client.Service ...

and it is within the parameterless Service constructor that our problems are occurring (see stack trace).

[Jochem van Dieten]

Let e guess: the component you are using has been built against Axis 2.0. ColdFusion uses Axis 1.3 and you are most likely running into a classloader issue.

[Jill_of_all_trades]

It's 1.3. The .jar we are building against shows the following in its META-INF/MANIFEST.MF file:

Manifest-Version: 1.0

Ant-Version: Apache Ant 1.5.3

Created-By: 1.4.2_05-b04 (Sun Microsystems Inc.)

Name: org/apache/axis

Implementation-Title: Apache Axis

Implementation-Version: 1.3 2244 October 5 2005

Implementation-Vendor: Apache Web Services

This is also the .jar that we are running with on the server (just checked) when we succesfully run the component stand-alone.

Thanks for your help!

[Jill_of_all_trades]

We have found that the CF webservice.jar contains the org.apache.axis classes we need to use in our java component.  The webservice.jar is overriding the axis.jar classes.  We are trying to use javaloader.cfc but once you start "naming" the classes you want to load there are always some missing and/or they are not getting loaded in the right sequence/combination.

this is the latest in a long list of errors we have been getting:

An exception occurred while instantiating a Java object. The class must not be an interface or an abstract class. If the class has a constructor that accepts an argument, you must call the constructor explicitly using the init(args) method. Error : org.apache.xerces.jaxp.DocumentBuilderFactoryImpl cannot be cast to javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory

paths[1]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\axis.jar";
paths[2]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\cfmx_bootstrap.jar";
paths[3]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\cfx.jar";
paths[4]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\commons-beanutils-1.8.0.jar";
paths[5]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\commons-collections-2.1.jar";
paths[6]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\commons-discovery.jar";
paths[7]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\commons-logging.jar";
paths[8]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\dom4j.jar";
paths[9]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\javax.activation.jar";
paths[10]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\javax.mail.jar";
paths[11]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\jaxen.jar";
paths[12]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\jaxrpc.jar";
paths[13]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\jdom.jar";
paths[14]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\jmc.jar";
paths[15]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\js.jar";
paths[16]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\jsafeFIPS.jar";
paths[17]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\jsafeJCEFIPS.jar";
paths[18]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\jtds-1.2.4.jar";
paths[19]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\log4j.jar";
paths[20]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\oncrpc.jar";
paths[21]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\portlet-proxy.jar";
paths[22]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\saaj.jar";
paths[23]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\servlet.jar";
paths[24]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\vbjclientorb.jar";
paths[25]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\***our custom****.jar";
paths[26]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\wsdl4j-1.5.1.jar";
paths[27]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\xercesImpl.jar";
paths[28]="D:\JRun4\servers\cfusion\cfusion-ear\cfusion-war\WEB-INF\lib\xmlParserAPIs.jar";

Seems a little excessive to me, too.  Any ideas would be very appreciated!

Thanks!

[lance_saldanha]

Anyone have a solution to this problem?

[-__cfSearching__-]

Class loader conflicts are sometimes very hard to troubleshoot. (It is called jar hell for good reason).  Since you mentioned using the javaLoader, is there a reason for using it here? Have you tried simply placing the jar in your class path and using createObject(...) instead?

[Jill_of_all_trades]

We had a conflict with a version of axis that CF uses. We had to unload the CF jar files, call the custom jar to access the version of axis that we needed for the web service and then reload the cf jar files.

[-__cfSearching__-]

It's 1.3. The .jar we are building against shows the following in its

Implementation-Version: 1.3 2244 October 5 2005

...

We had a conflict with a version of axis that CF uses.  We

had to unload the CF jar files, call  the custom jar to

access the version of axis that we needed for the web

service and then reload the cf jar files.

Then I am not sure how you are successfully building against axis 1.3 if the custom jar requires a later version of axis.

From what little I know about it, you either have to upgrade the axis jar or ensure that the desired version is loaded first by the class loader. Though I have no idea what CF features that might break in the process ...

[Jill_of_all_trades]

This was a while ago and I am no longer on contract at this company so bear with me while I try to remember... I believe we used trial and error until we got the right combination for axis and I believe log4j. Check out the documentation for cfloader. This is the component we used to accomplish this. Other people have ran across this issue and I found this solution searching on the internet.

[lance_saldanha]

We were able to resolve this by adding the following to our JVM arguments:

-Dcoldfusion.classPath={application.home}/servers/cfusion/cfusion-ear/cfusion-war/WEB-INF/cfusion/lib,C:/jars