Spring boot application with apache axis

Question

I am trying to run a spring boot jar which has axis2 dependencies in it. I am using spring boot maven plugin to build the jar (with dependencies). When I try to run my jar, I get the following exception in my console:

org.apache.axis2.AxisFault: The G:application\myapp\target\myapp.jar!\lib\axis2-1.6.1.jar file cannot be found.
at org.apache.axis2.deployment.repository.util.DeploymentFileData.setClassLoader(DeploymentFileData.java:111)
at org.apache.axis2.deployment.ModuleDeployer.deploy(ModuleDeployer.java:70)
at org.apache.axis2.deployment.repository.util.DeploymentFileData.deploy(DeploymentFileData.java:136)
at org.apache.axis2.deployment.DeploymentEngine.doDeploy(DeploymentEngine.java:813)
at org.apache.axis2.deployment.RepositoryListener.loadClassPathModules(RepositoryListener.java:222)
at org.apache.axis2.deployment.RepositoryListener.init2(RepositoryListener.java:71)
at org.apache.axis2.deployment.RepositoryListener.<init>(RepositoryListener.java:64)
at org.apache.axis2.deployment.DeploymentEngine.loadFromClassPath(DeploymentEngine.java:175)
at org.apache.axis2.deployment.FileSystemConfigurator.getAxisConfiguration(FileSystemConfigurator.java:135)
at ...

I then checked the structure of my jar. It has lib folder inside it, which contained all the jars (including the above mentioned axis jar). Attached is the screen shot of lib folder. Following are the solutions which I have tried:

1. Placed axis jar in the same directory as application jar.
2. Created lib folder in the same directory as application jar and placed axis jar inside it.
3. Modified manifest file to include Class-Path: /lib/

None of the solutions has worked. However, when I run the application class in eclipse, the app starts and runs perfectly. But, once I create the jar, nothing seems to run.

Can anyone please help? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

It looks like Axis can't cope with being run from a jar that's nested within another jar. It works fine in Eclipse as the Axis jar is available directly on the filesystem rather than being nested inside your Spring Boot application's jar file.

You can configure your application's fat jar file so that Spring Boot knows to unpack the Axis jar into a temporary location when it's run. If you're using Maven:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <requiresUnpack>
                    <dependency>
                        <groupId>org.apache.axis2</groupId>
                        <artifactId>axis2</artifactId>
                    </dependency>
                </requiresUnpack>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

And if you're using Gradle:

springBoot  {
    requiresUnpack = ['org.apache.axis2:axis2']
}

See the Spring Boot documentation for some further details.