Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Cannot instantiate interface org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextInitializer

Question

I am facing the following error:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Cannot instantiate interface org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextInitializer : org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SharedMetadataReaderFactoryContextInitializer at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.createSpringFactoriesInstances(SpringApplication.java:414) at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.getSpringFactoriesInstances(SpringApplication.java:394) at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.getSpringFactoriesInstances(SpringApplication.java:385) at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.initialize(SpringApplication.java:261) at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.(SpringApplication.java:237) at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:1191) at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:1180)

My main method is

package proj1;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.builder.SpringApplicationBuilder;
import org.springframework.boot.context.web.SpringBootServletInitializer;

@SpringBootApplication
public class WebApplication extends SpringBootServletInitializer {
    @Override
    protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder application) {
        return application.sources(WebApplication.class);
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        SpringApplication.run(WebApplication.class, args);
    }
}

My pom.xml is

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.webapp</groupId>
  <artifactId>proj1</artifactId>
  <packaging>war</packaging>
  <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>1.3.5.RELEASE</version>
    </parent>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>proj1 Maven Webapp</name>
  <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
  <dependencies>
   <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
            <version>4.0.0.RELEASE</version>
        </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
      <version>3.8.1</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
     <dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-autoconfigure</artifactId>
    <version>1.4.0.RELEASE</version>
</dependency> 
    <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.springframework.boot/spring-boot -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
    <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
    <version>3.1.0</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
            <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <build>
    <finalName>proj1</finalName>
  </build>
</project>

Answer 1

I recently came across this issue. I was running an executable jar through a bat file. My executable jar was already having all the spring boot jars required for the version mentioned in the pom.xml. But by mistake I defined a classpath of spring-boot libraries(of other version) in the bat file as well. When I removed that classpath entry, this particular issue was gone as then it was using only the spring boot jars that were mentioned in the pom file. I think this issue is coming because of the version conflict of the spring jars. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks.