Inject EntityManager in JSF managed bean always NULL

[jochen.seifarth]

Trying to inject an EntityManager into a JSF managed bean fails in JBoss 4.0.4RC1.

My entities are in a JAR, JSF managed beans in a WAR (beans are listed as managed bean in faces-config.xml and work....apart from an injected EntityManager always being NULL). Both the JAR and the WAR are bundled in an EAR which is then deployed.

META-INF/persistence.xml in entities JAR is

<persistence>
 <persistence-unit name="jsEntities">
 <provider>org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence</provider>
 <jta-data-source>java:/bookingDatasource</jta-data-source>
 <properties>
 <property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect"/>
 <property name="hibernate.transaction.manager_lookup_class" value="org.hibernate.transaction.JBossTransactionManagerLookup"/>
 <property name="hibernate.transaction.flush_before_completion" value="true"/>
 <property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="update"/>
 <property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="true"/>
 </properties>
 </persistence-unit>
</persistence>

The JSF managed beans looks like this:

import javax.annotation.Resource;
import javax.persistence.*;
import java.util.*;

public class AddressPage {
 @PersistenceContext(unitName="jsEntities")
 private EntityManager em;

 @Resource
 private UserTransaction utx;

 public Person person = new Person();

 public void findPerson() {
 if (em == null) System.out.println(">>>em is null");
 person = em.find(Person.class, person.getGid());

From a JSF page I use

<h:inputText value="#{AddressPageBean.person.gid}" />
<h:commandButton value="FindPerson" action="#{AddressPageBean.findPerson}" />

which results in an the folllowing error in the log

00:48:57,361 INFO [STDOUT] >>>em is null
00:48:57,371 ERROR [[Faces Servlet]] Servlet.service() for servlet Faces Servlet threw exception
javax.faces.FacesException: Error calling action method of component with id _id0:_id4
 at org.apache.myfaces.application.ActionListenerImpl.processAction(ActionListenerImpl.java:74)
 at javax.faces.component.UICommand.broadcast(UICommand.java:106)
 at javax.faces.component.UIViewRoot._broadcastForPhase(UIViewRoot.java:90)
 at javax.faces.component.UIViewRoot.processApplication(UIViewRoot.java:164)
 at org.apache.myfaces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.invokeApplication(LifecycleImpl.java:316)
 at org.apache.myfaces.lifecycle.LifecycleImpl.execute(LifecycleImpl.java:86)
 at javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:106)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:252)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:173)
 at org.jboss.web.tomcat.filters.ReplyHeaderFilter.doFilter(ReplyHeaderFilter.java:96)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:202)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:173)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:213)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:178)
 at org.jboss.web.tomcat.security.CustomPrincipalValve.invoke(CustomPrincipalValve.java:54)
 at org.jboss.web.tomcat.security.SecurityAssociationValve.invoke(SecurityAssociationValve.java:174)
 at org.jboss.web.tomcat.security.JaccContextValve.invoke(JaccContextValve.java:74)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:126)
 at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:105)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:107)
 at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:148)
 at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:868)
 at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11BaseProtocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.processConnection(Http11BaseProtocol.java:663)
 at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.PoolTcpEndpoint.processSocket(PoolTcpEndpoint.java:527)
 at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.MasterSlaveWorkerThread.run(MasterSlaveWorkerThread.java:112)
 at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
Caused by: javax.faces.el.EvaluationException: Exception while invoking expression #{AddressPageBean.findPerson}
 at org.apache.myfaces.el.MethodBindingImpl.invoke(MethodBindingImpl.java:153)
 at org.apache.myfaces.application.ActionListenerImpl.processAction(ActionListenerImpl.java:63)
 ... 25 more
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
 at info.agentbob.faces.AddressPage.findPerson(AddressPage.java:28)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
 at org.apache.myfaces.el.MethodBindingImpl.invoke(MethodBindingImpl.java:129)
 ... 26 more

Looks like the persistence context cannot be found and therefore the EntityManager is NULL, but why ?

The persistence unit names match, therefore according to
http://trailblazer.demo.jboss.com/EJB3Trail/persistence/config/ I don't need a jboss-app.xml in the EAR as I have specified the persistence unit name.

What am I missing ?
Can I not inject an EntityManager in a JSF managed bean ? Would a bean have to be a "proper" EJB3 bean rather than a JSF managed bean for the EntityManager injection to work ?

Thanks for any ideas.