Apache-fop classloading error ....

Question

HI,
I am deploying a big EAR in WL 6.1 on solaris and I am bundling FOP 1.20.3
within it, I am
also including avalon 4.0 and logkit 1.0 jars within it as they are needed by
fop.jar. Whenever I
try to construct a "Driver()" class I get a NoClassDefFoundError on the org.apache.framework.logger.Loggable
interface that it needs. The strange thing is that when I do the following :
try {
ClassLoader cl = this.getClass().getClassLoader();
cl.loadClass("org.apache.avalon.framework.logger.Loggable"); // .........this
works OK
// the following .... fails with NoClassDefFoundError on Loggable
org.apache.fop.apps.Driver d = new org.apache.fop.apps.Driver();
} catch (Throwable t) {
cat.error("failed:", t);
It DOES work when I put the necessary jars on the server startup class path,
however it would obviously be
better to be able to bundle the 3rd party jars within my EAR ....... I know this
seems like it would be a general
weblogic classloader question - but I have had no problems with any other 3rd
party jars that are similar to
this one.
Has anyone else had these kinds of problems ?
Cheers,
Brian.

Answer 1

I have a similar problem, I tried to package the fop library with an ear also. I think it has to do with System properties. The fop library loads it's parser class from a system property, the class it finds is a weblogic library and that's when the problem begins. I was never able to solve this, but hope this gives you starting point. Keep us abreast of your findings.