Howto install web application with Spring Roo 2.0 on Websphere 8.5.5

To install spring roo 2.0.0.RC1 on Websphere 8.5.5.12 you have to solve some problems. The environment is as follows:

• Ubuntu 15.04 (GNU/Linux 3.19.0-15-generic x86_64)
• IBM J9 VM (build 2.8, JRE 1.8.0 Linux amd64-64 Compressed References 20170419_34
• Spring Roo 2.0.0.RC1
• Websphere 8.5.5.12

JPA problem

The first problem is the JPA compatibility. Roo 2.0.0.RC1 uses jpa 2.1 while WAS 8.5.5.12 jpa 2.0.At the start of the application there is such a mistake:

caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: com.ibm.websphere.persistence.PersistenceProviderImpl incompatible with javax.persistence.spi.PersistenceProvider at javax.persistence.Persistence$1.isLoaded(Persistence.java:110) ~[hibernate-jpa-2.1-api-1.0.0.Final.jar:1.0.0.Final]

To fix this problem, you need to add the HibernatePersistenceProviderResolver class to your project:

HibernatePersistenceProviderResolver.java

and register it in the Application class in the onStartup method

@Override public void onStartup(ServletContext servletContext) throws ServletException {
HibernatePersistenceProviderResolver.register();
super.onStartup(servletContext); }

XML-APIS problem

The second problem is due to xml-apis jar:

Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: org.apache.xalan.processor.TransformerFactoryImpl incompatible with javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory at javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory.newInstance(Unknown Source) ~[xml-apis-1.4.01.jar:na]

to solve it you need to make an exclusion in pom.xml like this:

<dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
      <exclusions>
      	<exclusion> 
          <groupId>xml-apis</groupId>
          <artifactId>xml-apis</artifactId>
        </exclusion>        
      </exclusions>
    </dependency>

WEBJARS problem

Third issue concerns the webjars protocol:

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException at java.io.FilterInputStream.close(FilterInputStream.java:192) at sun.net.www.protocol.jar.JarURLConnection$JarURLInputStream.close(JarURLConnection.java:121) at org.springframework.web.context.support.ServletContextResource.isReadable(ServletContextResource.java:120)

For some reason WAS uses the wsjar protocol instead of jar. Also to access the resources within the jars WAS must have a trailing slash in the path.To solve this, you need to add the following class:

WasWebJarAssetLocator.java

and log it in to WebMvcConfiguration in the addResourceHandlers method

@Override public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) { super.addResourceHandlers(registry); registry.addResourceHandler("/webjars/**").addResourceLocations("classpath:/META-INF/resources/webjars/"). resourceChain(false).addResolver(new WebJarsResourceResolver(new WasWebJarAssetLocator())); }

finally adding variable to was (web container custom properties)

com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.SkipMetaInfResourcesProcessing = true

Transactions problem

Another issue with regard to transactions is:

Caused by: java.lang.LinkageError: com/ibm/websphere/uow/UOWSynchronizationRegistry.registerInterposedSynchronization(Ljavax/transaction/Synchronization;)V (loaded from file:/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/plugins/com.ibm.ws.runtime.jar by org.eclipse.osgi.internal.baseadaptor.DefaultClassLoader@d30c8d80) called from class org.springframework.transaction.jta.WebSphereUowTransactionManager$UOWActionAdapter (loaded from file:/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/AppSrv01/installedApps/UBDSK01Node01Cell/uman-1_0_1_war.ear/uman-1.0.1.war/WEB-INF/lib/spring-tx-4.3.3.RELEASE.jar by com.ibm.ws.classloader.CompoundClassLoader@19d0788f[war:uman-1_0_1_war/uman-1.0.1.war]   Local ClassPath: com.ibm.ws.uow.embeddable.EmbeddableUOWManagerImpl.runUnderNewUOW(EmbeddableUOWManagerImpl.java:791) ~[com.ibm.ws.runtime.jar:na] ... 112 common frames omitted

to solve it you have to make some exclusions in the pom. For javax.transaction we make the exclusion and scope provided:

<dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
      <exclusions>
      	<exclusion> 
          <groupId>xml-apis</groupId>
          <artifactId>xml-apis</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion> 
          <groupId>javax.transaction</groupId>
          <artifactId>javax.transaction-api</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
      </exclusions>
    </dependency>
<dependency>
      <groupId>javax.transaction</groupId>
      <artifactId>javax.transaction-api</artifactId>
      <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

for jta we make the exclusion:

<dependency>
      <groupId>io.springlets</groupId>
      <artifactId>springlets-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
      <exclusions>
      	<exclusion>
      		<groupId>javax.transaction</groupId>
    		<artifactId>jta</artifactId>
      	</exclusion>
      </exclusions>
    </dependency>

that’s all.

Having done all this, the application will run smoothly.