GORM Data Services are not injected when deployed to Tomcat

[brianjohnsen]

When using GORM Data Services in a Grail app, everything works fine if the app uses the embedded tomcat, e.g. during testing and bootRun, and even started as a runnable jar.

But when the app is deployed to Tomcat all data services are null. They are not added to the applicationContext at all, e.g. Holders.applicationContext.getBean('beerService') results in a NoSuchBeanDefinitionException.

Originally from this SO question.

Sample project

You can find a sample project showing the problem here: https://github.com/brianjohnsen/gorm-data-service-issue

Sanity check

2. Run ./gradlew bootRun
3. Verify that calling curl http://localhost:8080/beer returns an empty list []

Steps to reproduce

1. Checkout the sample project
2. Run ./gradlew bootWar
3. Copy the WAR to a Tomcat server, e.g. cp build/libs/notworking.war ~/PATH/TO/LOCAL/TOMCAT/webapps/
4. Start the Tomcat server, e.g. ./PATH/TO/LOCAL/TOMCAT/bin/startup.sh
5. Calling the /beer endpoint now returns an Internal server error, e.g. curl http://localhost:8080/notworking/beer returns {"message":"Internal server error","error":500}.
6. Checking the log reveals that a NullPointerException is thrown because the beerService is not injected (ie. null).

Stacktrace excerpt:

ERROR --- [nio-8080-exec-2] o.g.web.errors.GrailsExceptionResolver   : NullPointerException occurred when processing request: [GET] /notworking/beer
Cannot invoke method count() on null object. Stacktrace follows:

java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method count() on null object
	at gorm.data.service.issue.BeerController.index(BeerController.groovy:23)
	at grails.gorm.transactions.GrailsTransactionTemplate$2.doInTransaction(GrailsTransactionTemplate.groovy:94)
	at org.springframework.transaction.support.TransactionTemplate.execute(TransactionTemplate.java:140)
	at grails.gorm.transactions.GrailsTransactionTemplate.execute(GrailsTransactionTemplate.groovy:91)...

[fernando88to]

I forked the project and it worked.

https://github.com/fernando88to/gorm-data-service-issue

[brianjohnsen]

@fernando88to when you say "worked" what du you mean exactly?

Have you deployed it to a Tomcat and confirmed that the data services are injected? If so, which version of Tomcat/Java/OS are you using?

I've tried combinations of following: Java: 8.0.322-tem and 8.0.302-open Tomcat: 9.0.31 and 8.5.78 OS: Ubuntu 20.04

[fernando88to]

Hi @brianjohnsen, the version is in the file https://github.com/fernando88to/gorm-data-service-issue/blob/master/Dockerfile

tomcat:9.0.63-jdk11-temurin

In the file https://github.com/fernando88to/gorm-data-service-issue/blob/master/grails-app/init/gorm/data/service/issue/BootStrap.groovy I made an initial load.

Then I applied the following commands:

./gradlew build. docker build -t gormdataservice:0.1 .. docker run -it --rm -p 8080:8080 gormdataservice:0.1. Call curl http://localhost:8080/beer (return one register)

I will create a new dockerfile with the versions you mentioned.

[brianjohnsen]

@fernando88to Yeah, that's not exactly what I described. I’m using bootWar as the target and I think your version uses war as the target.

Anyways, if I switch to using the war target everything works and the data services are injected again.

It seems that the Spring Boot runnable jar stuff ruins the DI of data services.

[fernando88to]

Change the dockerfile to run with war runnable.

steps:

git clone https://github.com/fernando88to/gorm-data-service-issue.git cd gorm-data-service-issue ./gradlew build (with jdk 8) docker build -f Dockerfile_java_8_tem -t java_8_tem:0.1 . docker run -it --rm -p 8080:8080 java_8_tem:0.1 http://localhost:8080/beer return one register

The version of the jdk is eclipse-temurin:8u322-b06-jdk