Eclipse Java EE project and Spring : classnotfoundexception

I am trying to build an project in Eclipse (actually I'm using RAD, so basicall开发者_JS百科y eclipse, and when I say 'Java EE Project' I mean an 'Enterprise Application Project').

My Enterprise Application Project (the 'EAR' project) has two module projects : - service - web

The service project has some stuff in it, all wired up using Spring.

The web project has its own stuff in it, all wired up using Spring. The UI stuff in the web project needs to use the stuff in the service project.

Both projects are included in the EAR project as modules.

The web project lists the 'service' project as a dependent project in the build path, it's checked off for export, and also has it listed as a EE Module Dependency.

I'm having a really hard time to get this working though:

The spring context in the web project is of course what gets loaded when the application is deployed, and it imports the spring config I need from the service project. This seems to be working fine.

When spring tries to instantiate a bean it throws a ClassNotFoundException. On the very first bean.

I tried simply copying the spring config from my service context and pasting it into my web context, but I got the same ClassNotFoundException.

I have tried instantiating an object of that type (the class that spring says cannot be found) in the java controller class in the web project, and it is successful, both at compile time (no compile errors) and at runtime (no exceptions).

So the classes from my service project are not available on the classpath when spring tries to use them.

Any ideas what's going on here and/or what I might be able to do about it?

There is a class loader policy that you should use ParentClass First . That will be managed either through Application.xml or through web.xml . You need to check your xml's then try.

It's a class loader issue.

Since you're using Spring, I'll assume that you don't have EJBs. If that's the case, why do you need an EAR? Deploy the whole thing as a web project, in a single WAR.

Put all your .class and Spring configuration .xml files in WEB-INF/classes. Load the configuration using org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener.

I seem to have fixed this - I'm not sure exactly what the problem was but there must have been a small typo in my spring config. I decided to just start fresh with a new spring config and when I started building the new one back up things were working fine. There must have been a problem with the old one.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

Unfortunately we're not always able to change project structure. We're working on structures other people have put in place.

I looked into the ParentClassFirst vs ParentClassLast setting - it seems on websphere the ParentClassFirst setting is the default if you don't specify anything, so I'm leaving it without specification to get that functionality. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v6r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.express.doc/info/exp/ae/crun_classload.html