JBoss EJB Client handler missing argument?

[tanvir]

I am trying to set a new InitialContext in the following manner (which is pretty standard I believe):

private static InitialContext getInitialContext() throws NamingException {  
     InitialContext context = null;  
     try { 
          Properties properties = new Properties(); 
          properties.put(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, "org.jboss.ejb.client.naming"); 
          properties.put(Context.INITIAL_CONTEXT_FACTORY, "org.jboss.naming.remote.client.InitialContextFactory"); 
          properties.put(Context.PROVIDER_URL, "remote://localhost:4447"); 
          properties.put(Context.SECURITY_PRINCIPAL, "username"); 
          properties.put(Context.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS, "password"); 
          context = new InitialContext(properties); 
          System.out.println("\n\tGot initial Context: " + context); 
     } 
     catch (Exception e) { 
          e.printStackTrace(); 
     } 
     return context; 
}  

public static void sendMessage(RoboticsParameters object_msg) throws Exception {  
     InitialContext context = getInitialContext();  
     // other code 
}

The code "fails" at the line where the new InitialContext is created using the properties and i get a java.lang.NullPointerException. I suspect I am missing an argument. Here is the stack trace:

WARN: EJB client integration will not be available due to a problem setting up the EJB client handler java.lang.NullPointerException 
at org.jboss.naming.remote.client.InitialContextFactory.<clinit>(InitialContextFactory.java:118) 
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method) at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:348) 
at com.sun.naming.internal.VersionHelper12.loadClass(VersionHelper12.java:72) 
at com.sun.naming.internal.VersionHelper12.loadClass(VersionHelper12.java:61) 
at javax.naming.spi.NamingManager.getInitialContext(NamingManager.java:672) 
at javax.naming.InitialContext.getDefaultInitCtx(InitialContext.java:313) 
at javax.naming.InitialContext.init(InitialContext.java:244) 
at javax.naming.InitialContext.<init>(InitialContext.java:216)

Any suggestions?

I am running JBoss EAP 6.4 and using EJB 3. I have jboss-client.jar in the class path.

[wdfink]

Drop URL_PKG_PREFIXES, you are mixing two different approaches. See Remote EJB invocations via JNDI - EJB client API or remote-naming project .

But I would recommend to not use this approach as there are some drawbacks, i.e. no cluster support. See the link above for additional onformations.

If you have a subscrption you can look for an article in the knowledgebase which describe the differences.

[tanvir]

I checked the source code for:

jboss-remote-naming/src/main/java/org/jboss/naming/remote/client/InitialContextFactory.java

and found where the log message was coming from:

public class InitialContextFactory implements javax.naming.spi.InitialContextFactory { 
     // code 
     private static final String REMOTE_NAMING_EJB_CLIENT_HANDLER_CLASS_NAME = "org.jboss.naming.remote.client.ejb.RemoteNamingStoreEJBClientHandler"; 
     // code 
     try { 
          klass = classLoader.loadClass(REMOTE_NAMING_EJB_CLIENT_HANDLER_CLASS_NAME); 
          method = klass.getMethod("setupEJBClientContext", new Class<?>[] {Properties.class, List.class}); 
     } catch (Throwable t) { 
          logger.warn("EJB client integration will not be available due to a problem setting up the EJB client handler", t); 
     } 
     // other code 
}

The class org.jboss.naming.remote.client.ejb.RemoteNamingStoreEJBClientHandler was in the jar that I added to the class path but for some reason there were problems loading the class.

Then I stumbled upon this small README-EJB-JMS.txt file in the [jboss_home]/bin/client folder which states the following:

"Maven users should not use this jar, but should use the following BOM dependencies instead

<dependencies> 
     <dependency> 
          <groupId>org.jboss.as</groupId> 
          <artifactId>jboss-as-ejb-client-bom</artifactId> 
          <type>pom</type> 
     </dependency> 
     <dependency> 
          <groupId>org.jboss.as</groupId> 
          <artifactId>jboss-as-jms-client-bom</artifactId> 
          <type>pom</type> 
     </dependency> 
</dependencies>

This is because using maven with a shaded jar has a very high chance of causing class version conflicts, which is why we do not publish this jar to the maven repository."

So, I added the maven dependency instead of having the jar in my class path and VOILA! It works!