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I have a fairly standard archirecture where a PrimeFaces page calls a login action in a class annotated with javax.inject.@Named and javax.enterprise.context.@SessionScoped.

The doLogin() method receives null back from FacesContext.getCurrentInstance() even though the Faces Servlet should be properly invoked.

PMorganCA
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1 Answers1

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There are many posts that say essentially, "the only time FacesContext.getCurrentInstance() will return null is when it's called outside a managed bean thread". But I did find one post on another forum that identified a build/class loader issue that causes it. Somehow, due to improperly specified dependencies, your FacesContext class can get loaded for the container and again for the app. So what is supposed to be a singleton turns into two singletons (somehow...?). Anyway, I'm posting this to record the fix, not to fully explain the problem behind the symptom.

I'm using JBoss Developer Studio, building with Maven for JBoss EAP 6.2. EAP comes with modules for JSF 1 and JSF 2.1. I want to use 2.1, which is stored here: 

C:\JBoss\jboss-eap-6.2.0\modules\system\layers\base\javax\faces\api\main.

In my EJB project POM I had incorrectly added a dependency for jsf-api <scope>compile, which resulted in FacesContext.getCurrentInstance() returning null as described above.

The solution was: in the POM for my ejb and my web projects, I added this dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jboss.spec.javax.faces</groupId>
    <artifactId>jboss-jsf-api_2.1_spec</artifactId>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

And to make sure my deployed ejb project also tells JBoss about that I needed to make sure it gets published with this in it's MANIFEST.MF:

Dependencies: javax.faces.api:main

That can be done by Maven too, by putting an archive configuration in the POM for the ejb project where the build plugin was created:

<!-- most of this <build> element was already in my POM -->
<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <artifactId>maven-ejb-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.3</version>
            <configuration>
                <ejbVersion>3.1</ejbVersion>
                <!-- I added this <archive> element to tell Maven to add the dependency line in MANIFEST.MF -->
                <archive>
                    <manifestEntries>
                        <Dependencies>javax.faces.api:main</Dependencies>
                    </manifestEntries>
                </archive>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

For me, the maven-ejb-plugin entry was already there and I just added the archive definition to the existing <configuration>. I assume if you are building with ejb-jar-plugin or ejb-war-plugin, the same <archive>...</archive> definition could be used.

PMorganCA
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