Spring Cloud Gateway; Spring MVC found on classpath, which is incompatible with Spring Cloud Gateway Issue

Question

I got this below error when run the API-GATEWAY, I tried so many ways but I couldn't solve this issue.

Description:

Spring MVC found on classpath, which is incompatible with Spring Cloud Gateway.

Action:

Please set spring.main.web-application-type=reactive or remove spring-boot-starter-web dependency.

Main Class

package com.sample.apigateway;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.cloud.netflix.eureka.EnableEurekaClient;

@SpringBootApplication
@EnableEurekaClient
public class ApiGatewayApplication {

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

}

application.yml

spring:
  application:
    name: GATEWAY-SERVICE

  cloud:
    gateway:
      routes:
        - id: USER-SERVICE
          uri: lb://USER-SERVICE
          predicates:
            - Path=/users/**
        - id: DEPARTMENT-SERVICE
          uri: lb://DEPARTMENT-SERVICE
          predicates:
            - Path=/departments/**

eureka:
  client:
    register-with-eureka: true
    fetch-registry: true
    service-url:
      defaultZone: http://localhost:8761/eureka/

  instance:
    hostname: localhost

server:
  port: 9191

pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<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 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>2.5.3</version>
    <relativePath/>
    <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
  </parent>
  <groupId>com.sample.apigateway</groupId>
  <artifactId>apigateway</artifactId>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>apigateway</name>
  <description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
  <properties>
    <java.version>11</java.version>
    <spring-cloud.version>2020.0.3</spring-cloud.version>
  </properties>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-webflux</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>io.springfox</groupId>
      <artifactId>springfox-boot-starter</artifactId>
      <version>3.0.0</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-gateway</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-netflix-eureka-client</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-netflix-eureka-server</artifactId>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-cloud-dependencies</artifactId>
        <version>${spring-cloud.version}</version>
        <type>pom</type>
        <scope>import</scope>
      </dependency>
    </dependencies>
  </dependencyManagement>

  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>

</project>

Full Error Message

2021-07-30 23:12:02.420  WARN 19032 --- [           main] ConfigServletWebServerApplicationContext : Exception encountered during context initialization - cancelling refresh attempt: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'org.springframework.cloud.gateway.config.GatewayClassPathWarningAutoConfiguration$SpringMvcFoundOnClasspathConfiguration': Instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.BeanInstantiationException: Failed to instantiate [org.springframework.cloud.gateway.config.GatewayClassPathWarningAutoConfiguration$SpringMvcFoundOnClasspathConfiguration]: Constructor threw exception; nested exception is org.springframework.cloud.gateway.support.MvcFoundOnClasspathException
2021-07-30 23:12:02.423  INFO 19032 --- [           main] o.apache.catalina.core.StandardService   : Stopping service [Tomcat]
2021-07-30 23:12:02.441  INFO 19032 --- [           main] ConditionEvaluationReportLoggingListener :

Error starting ApplicationContext. To display the conditions report re-run your application with 'debug' enabled.
2021-07-30 23:12:02.454 ERROR 19032 --- [           main] o.s.b.d.LoggingFailureAnalysisReporter   :

***************************
APPLICATION FAILED TO START
***************************

Description:

Spring MVC found on classpath, which is incompatible with Spring Cloud Gateway.

Action:

Please set spring.main.web-application-type=reactive or remove spring-boot-starter-web dependency.


Process finished with exit code 1

Answer 1

I was facing the similar issue. As suggested in the error section making following change to application.properties file worked fine for me.

spring.main.web-application-type=reactive

Answer 2

Please note that Spring Cloud Gateway is not compatible with Spring MVC (spring-boot-starter-web). This is outlined in section "How to include Spring Cloud Gateway in the official reference documentation":

Spring Cloud Gateway is built on Spring Boot 2.x, Spring WebFlux, and Project Reactor. As a consequence, many of the familiar synchronous libraries (Spring Data and Spring Security, for example) and patterns you know may not apply when you use Spring Cloud Gateway.

Additionally, it is stated that:

Spring Cloud Gateway requires the Netty runtime provided by Spring Boot and Spring Webflux. It does not work in a traditional Servlet Container or when built as a WAR.

As already suggested by the error message, you would need to remove the dependency on spring-boot-starter-web. You can list all your direct and transitive dependencies with the following command:

mvn dependency:tree

This will reveal that spring-cloud-starter-netflix-eureka-server depends on spring-boot-starter-web. Once you remove the following lines from your pom.xml, your application should start up:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-netflix-eureka-server</artifactId>
</dependency>