JPA and JSF - Problem persisting object

Question

Hi all.
I'm having some trouble with JPA, persisting an object to a MySQL table.
Let's say I have a simple bean, Message:
package my.package
import java.io.Serializable;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.Column;
import javax.persistence.Table;
import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.GenerationType;
@Entity
@Table(name="messages")
public class Message implements Serializable {
     @Id
     @GeneratedValue(strategy=GenerationType.AUTO)
     private int id;
     @Column(name="message_text")
     private String message;
     @Column(name="message_author")
     private String author;
     public String getMessage() {
          return this.message;
     public void setMessage(String message) {
          this.message = message;
     public String getAuthor() {
          return this.author;
     public void setAuthor(String author) {
          this.author = author;
}And a controller for this Message bean:
package my.package;
import javax.annotation.Resource;
import javax.persistence.Query;
import javax.persistence.EntityManager;
import javax.persistence.EntityManagerFactory;
import javax.persistence.PersistenceUnit;
import javax.transaction.UserTransaction;
public class MessageController {
     @PersistenceUnit(unitName="em1")
     private EntityManagerFactory emf;
     @Resource
     private UserTransaction utx;
     private Message message;
     public Message getMessage() {
          return this.message;
     public void setMessage(Message message) {
          this.message = message;
     public String save() {
          EntityManager em = null;
          String returnValue = "";
          try {
               em = this.emf.createEntityManager();
               utx.begin();
               em.persist(this.message);
               utx.commit();
               returnValue = "success";
          } catch(Exception e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
               returnValue = "failure";
          return returnValue;
}Relevant code from the faces-config.xml:
<managed-bean>
     <managed-bean-name>MessageController</managed-bean-name>
     <managed-bean-class>my.package.MessageController</managed-bean-class>
     <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
     <managed-property>
          <property-name>message</property-name>
          <property-class>my.package.Message</property-class>
          <value>#{Message}</value>
     </managed-property>
</managed-bean>
<managed-bean>
     <managed-bean-name>Message</managed-bean-name>
     <managed-bean-class>my.package.Message</managed-bean-class>
     <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
</managed-bean>This is my simple persistence.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<persistence version="1.0"
     xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence"
     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
     xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence/persistence_1_0.xsd">
    <persistence-unit name ="em1">
         <jta-data-source>jdbc/__glfish</jta-data-source>
    </persistence-unit>
</persistence>The __glfish resource is all set up via Glassfish to point to my MySQL server, via a MySQLPool.
Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong? The Message doesn't get added to the table in my database, and I get a NullPointerException in the method MessageController.save() on the property MessageController.message - which I have specified in the faces-config.xml. Shouldn't that be enough? What have I missed?

Answer 1

Ok, I have (re-)located the problem. It's not my Message property which gets a NullPointerException - it seems like the problem is with my EntityManagerFactory instance. The PersistenceUnit don't get assigned, even though I declare it in my persistence.xml file.
Maybe it is something wrong with my file structure?
The .war file have this structure:
- WEB-INF
     - classes
          - my
               - package
                    Message.class
                    MessageController.class
     - lib
          [external jars goes here]
          - META-INF
               persistence.xml
     faces-config.xml
     web.xml
[*.jsp/*.xhtml goes here]Can anyone see what's wrong?