How to tell if a class within a jar file is being accessed?

Question

Hello,
I have written a web app using NetBeans 5.5 and some external libraries.
Rome 0.9 and a Rome module georss-rome.jar.
Everything works fine with the integrated Netbeans tomcat 5.5...
When I try to deploy this as a war using Tomcat 5.5 standalone It will not work properly. To make things worse, I get no error.
In my code, I instantiate a class in the georss module by doing the following:
                GeoRSSModule geoRssModule = GeoRSSUtils.getGeoRSS(entry);
                if(geoRssModule != null)
...do something;
}I then check for null and if not null I do stuff with methods within that jar.
Basically I pass a rss feed or a georss feed. If its a georss feed then geoRssModule would not be null.
As I said, this works fine within integrated tomcat but does nothing (no expected action) with standalone which leads me to believe that this is a deployment/jar/classpath issue.
To me it seems that the class GeoRSSModule is never actually instantiated, but I never get any errors or expected output.
I set tomcat logging.properties to FINEST for all types of logging.
Is there a way to determine if the jar is even being accessed for that class file?
TIA!
BTW, I dont have the module source.
I also verified that the jars (rome.jar and georss-rome.jar) are being deployed to webapps/myapp/WEB-INF/lib
Message was edited by:
gforty

Answer 1

GeoRSSModule geoRssModule = GeoRSSUtils.getGeoRSS(entry);Try placing logging statements before and after this statement so that you can track execution. Make sure that your code at least gets to this particular line where you instantiate the GeoRSSModule object. Then place a logging statement afterwards to see if an object was indeed created.
What helps me in situations like this is that I also use the NetBeans attached debugger listening on your standalone Tomcat installation. This allows you to trace your execution on the server side, one line at a time, giving you a clearer understanding of program flow.