Hi All,
I'be been tearing my hair out for a couple of weeks over this one and would
appreciate any assistance anyone could give. It's a bit of a unique scenario,
so it'll take me a little while to explain:
We have a legacy struts app, forwarding to a jsf app (details of how below)
running on tomcat 5.5.17. 99.9% of the time everythign works great, but every
now and then (which in users speak translates to 'I keep on getting', hence we
can't ignore it) a NullPointerException gets thrown from
org.apache.catalina.connector.Request.setAttribute.
The flow is:
Third party application ---<<http redirect>>---> JSFBridgeFilter (will explain
later) -----> Struts application ----> JSFBridge--->JSF Application--->Response
back to third party app.
The struts application contains proprietary logic to interface with the third
party app, so we can't get rid of it. Business wants all development internally
to be done in JSF, so we can't get rid of that.
The JSFBridgeFilter instantiates the JSF Context for later use, and wraps the
request that is used to instantiate it in a request wrapper that translates
".do" context paths to ".jsf" context paths (otherwise all the forms submit
back to ".do" after coming from the struts framework. It looks like this:
public void doFilter(ServletRequest strutsRequest, ServletResponse response,
FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {
HttpServletRequest jsfRequest = new
StrutsToJsfRequestWrapper((HttpServletRequest)strutsRequest);
JSFBridge.getFacesContext(viewId, (HttpServletRequest)jsfRequest,
(HttpServletResponse)response);
chain.doFilter(strutsRequest, response);
}
...and the StrutsToJsfRequestWrapper contains only one override method (it
extends HttpServletRequestWrapper):
@Override
public String getServletPath() {
String oldPath = super.getServletPath();
String newPath = null;
int index = oldPath.lastIndexOf(".do");
if (index >= 0) {
newPath = oldPath.substring(0, index + 1) + ".jsf";
} else {
newPath = oldPath;
}
return newPath;
}
Now, you'll notice in the filter that the request wrapper is used to
instantiate the faces context, and the original request passed onto the struts
application. The 'getFacesContext' method implements some code from the apache
myfaces wiki that shows a way to call into the JSF framework from non jsf
artifacts:
It looks like this:
public class JSFBridge {
private abstract static class InnerFacesContext extends FacesContext {
protected static void setFacesContextAsCurrentInstance(final
FacesContext facesContext) {
FacesContext.setCurrentInstance(facesContext);
}
}
public static FacesContext getFacesContext(final String viewId, final
ServletRequest request, final ServletResponse response) {
FacesContext facesContext = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
if (facesContext != null) {
return facesContext;
}
return getNewFacesContext(viewId, request, response);
}
public static FacesContext getNewFacesContext(final String viewId,
final ServletRequest request, final ServletResponse response) {
FacesContext facesContext;
FacesContextFactory contextFactory = (FacesContextFactory)
FactoryFinder.getFactory(FactoryFinder.FACES_CONTEXT_FACTORY);
LifecycleFactory lifecycleFactory = (LifecycleFactory)
FactoryFinder.getFactory(FactoryFinder.LIFECYCLE_FACTORY);
Lifecycle lifecycle =
lifecycleFactory.getLifecycle(LifecycleFactory.DEFAULT_LIFECYCLE);
facesContext =
contextFactory.getFacesContext(((HttpServletRequest)request).getSession().getServletContext(),request,
response, lifecycle);
InnerFacesContext.setFacesContextAsCurrentInstance(facesContext);
UIViewRoot view =
facesContext.getApplication().getViewHandler().createView(facesContext, viewId);
facesContext.setViewRoot(view);
return facesContext;
}
}
And the final piece of the puzzle is a struts action that actually loads the
context and forwards to the appropriate JSF method...which looks like this:
public class ForwardToJSFAction extends Action {
public ActionForward execute(ActionMapping mapping, ActionForm form,
HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
JSFMapping viewMapping = (JSFMapping) mapping;
FacesContext ctx =
JSFBridge.getFacesContext(viewMapping.getViewId(), request, response);
MethodBinding mb = lookupMethodBinding(viewMapping, ctx);
navigateToMethodBinding(viewMapping, ctx, mb);
return null;
}
private MethodBinding lookupMethodBinding(JSFMapping viewMapping,
FacesContext ctx) {
return ctx.getApplication().createMethodBinding("#{" +
viewMapping.getJsfAction() + "}", new Class[] {});
}
private void navigateToMethodBinding(JSFMapping viewMapping,
FacesContext ctx, MethodBinding mb) {
Object obj = mb.invoke(ctx, new Object[] {});
NavigationHandler navHandler =
ctx.getApplication().getNavigationHandler();
navHandler.handleNavigation(ctx, "#{" +
viewMapping.getJsfAction() + "}", (String) obj);
}
}
Now, as odd as all this looks, it actually works quite well in 99.9% of the
cases. We get a request in struts, which forwards quite nicely onto a JSF
method and completes the business process in JSF. Every now and then though,
we get the following error when we try to invoke the method binding:
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.apache.catalina.connector.Request.setAttribute(Request.java:1376)
at
org.apache.catalina.connector.RequestFacade.setAttribute(RequestFacade.java:500)
at
javax.servlet.ServletRequestWrapper.setAttribute(ServletRequestWrapper.java:283)
at
org.apache.myfaces.context.servlet.RequestMap.setAttribute(RequestMap.java:46)
at
org.apache.myfaces.context.servlet.AbstractAttributeMap.put(AbstractAttributeMap.java:104)
at
org.apache.myfaces.el.VariableResolverImpl.resolveVariable(VariableResolverImpl.java:301)
at
org.apache.myfaces.config.LastVariableResolverInChain.resolveVariable(LastVariableResolverInChain.java:42)
at
org.apache.myfaces.el.ValueBindingImpl$ELVariableResolver.resolveVariable(ValueBindingImpl.java:574)
at org.apache.commons.el.NamedValue.evaluate(NamedValue.java:124)
at
org.apache.myfaces.el.ValueBindingImpl.resolveToBaseAndProperty(ValueBindingImpl.java:455)
at
org.apache.myfaces.el.MethodBindingImpl.resolveToBaseAndProperty(MethodBindingImpl.java:180)
at
org.apache.myfaces.el.MethodBindingImpl.invoke(MethodBindingImpl.java:114)
Diving into Request.java(Line 1376), shows that it's happening on this line:
Object listeners[] = context.getApplicationEventListeners();
So I'm guessing that 'context' is null for some reason. Since it is so rare,
it's almost impossible to reproduce in a manner consistent enough to actually
diagnose and debug it.
Can anyone see, from the above, anything that could shed some light on this?
Cheers
Adam
Number 1 in Truck Insurance
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