Nullpointer exception at com.sun.faces.config.InitFacesContext.cleanupInitMaps

Question

I am not able to deploy my war file into tomcat server. I am ending up with the below exception.

 SEVERE: ContainerBase.addChild: start: 
org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Catalina].StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[/BatchApp-1.0.0.M1]]
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:154)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:901)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:877)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:633)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:977)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig$DeployWar.run(HostConfig.java:1655)
    at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at com.sun.faces.config.InitFacesContext.cleanupInitMaps(InitFacesContext.java:281)
    at com.sun.faces.config.InitFacesContext.<init>(InitFacesContext.java:107)
    at com.sun.faces.config.FacesInitializer.onStartup(FacesInitializer.java:115)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5280)
    at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
    ... 11 more

May 11, 2013 5:28:05 PM org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig deployWAR
SEVERE: Error deploying web application archive C:\AppDev\Tomcat7.0\webapps\BatchApp-1.0.0.M1.war
java.lang.IllegalStateException: ContainerBase.addChild: start: org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Catalina].StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[/BatchApp-1.0.0.M1]]
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:904)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:877)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:633)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:977)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig$DeployWar.run(HostConfig.java:1655)
    at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

I further debugged it and looks like at the below code @getInitContextServletContextMap() method in com.sun.faces.config.InitFacesContext I am ending up with null pointer being returned.

 static Map getInitContextServletContextMap() {
    ConcurrentHashMap initContextServletContext = null;
    try {
        Field initContextMap = FacesContext.class.getDeclaredField("initContextServletContext");
        initContextMap.setAccessible(true);
        initContextServletContext = (ConcurrentHashMap)initContextMap.get(null);
    } catch (Exception e) {
        if (LOGGER.isLoggable(Level.FINEST)) {
            LOGGER.log(Level.FINEST, "Unable to get (init context, servlet context) map", e);
        }
    }
    return initContextServletContext;
}

It is cleared that the server is looking for "initContextServletContext", but where to set this?

Please let me know how can I resolve this issue.

Answer 1

Had the exact same error. It was a dependency issue: I was using Oracle's implementation of JSF (2.2.1), but one of my Maven dependencies was pulling in Apache MyFaces.

What happened is that the code snippet that you show, which is from the Oracle impelementation, tries to access a static private field of FacesContext. But the classloader has loaded the MyFaces implementation of FacesContext, which doesn't have that field. Therefore barf.

Check your dependencies. I bet you will find that you've got two different versions or two different implementations of JSF.