Apache fop classloading problem in EAR file

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

Dear Brian,
It looks to me like org.apache.fop.apps.Driver might be doing a
Class.forName() for the Loggable class. If Class.forName() does not pass a
specific classloader, the system classpath loader is used; which is why it
works when you put the classes on the system classpath.
Best regards,
Timothy Potter
Senior Software Engineer
eCommerce Server Division
BEA Systems, Inc.
"Brian Dowd" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:3c8c9ba0$[email protected]..
>
HI,
I am deploying a big EAR in WL 6.1 on solaris and I am bundling FOP1.20.3
within it, I am
also including avalon 4.0 and logkit 1.0 jars within it as they are neededby
fop.jar. Whenever I
try to construct a "Driver()" class I get a NoClassDefFoundError on theorg.apache.framework.logger.Loggable
interface that it needs. The strange thing is that when I do thefollowing :
>
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 classpath,
however it would obviously be
better to be able to bundle the 3rd party jars within my EAR ....... Iknow this
seems like it would be a general
weblogic classloader question - but I have had no problems with any other3rd
party jars that are similar to
this one.
Has anyone else had these kinds of problems ?
Cheers,
Brian.