On Mon, 27 Aug 2001, Frederick N. Brier wrote:
> Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 01:41:30 -0400
> From: Frederick N. Brier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Classpath problem
>
> Help me understand something. commons-beanutils.jar,
> commons-collections.jar, commons-digester.jar, struts.jar are placed in my
> .war files WEB-INF/lib directory. Everything is fine. I additionally copy
> them into my JVM's classpath (in JBoss by copying them into the
> jboss/lib/ext directory) and my Action and Form classes generate
> java.lang.ClassNotFound exceptions. Having them in just jboss/lib/ext and
> not the WEB-INF/lib also generates a java.lang.ClassNotFound
> exception. Why? Why does Struts care about where the .jar files are in
> the classpath?
The reason has to do with the nitty gritty details of the way class
loaders work in Java -- but the bottom line is that if a class Foo needs
access to other classes that are in /WEB-INF/classes or /WEB-INF/lib, then
class Foo must *itself* be stored in /WEB-INF/classes or /WEB-INF/lib.
>
> My reason for wanting to do this was most of my .war files were going to be
> built on top of Struts. There are also "base" utility classes that
> inherited from org.apache.struts.action.ActionForm and
> org.apache.struts.action.Action that most of my classes were going to
> inherit from. They were going to go in a .jar file that were deployed to
> /jboss/lib/ext. It didn't seem appropriate to have them all in each .war file.
>
> Thank you.
> Fred.
>
>
On the contrary, it's very appropriate -- the rationale is based on the
idea that web applications should be as *stand alone* as possible, and
include everything they need.
Craig
