RequestMappingHandlerAdapter': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NoSuchMethodError

Question

All of a sudden I am getting:

[localhost-startStop-1] WARN  org.springframework.web.context.support.XmlWebApplicationContext - Exception encountered during context initialization - cancelling refresh attempt: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.springframework.web.accept.ContentNegotiationManager.getStrategies()Ljava/util/List;
[localhost-startStop-1] ERROR org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet - Context initialization failed
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.springframework.web.accept.ContentNegotiationManager.getStrategies()Ljava/util/List;
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1578)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:545)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:482)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:306)

I don't know what I did/changed - it's just coming all of a sudden as I startup the server and request my website.

You can see the full stack trace with all exceptions here.

Any guess what's causing this all of a sudden?

---

My pom.xml (shortened to the essential dependencies):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <!-- ... -->

    <properties>
        <org.springframework-version>4.2.4.RELEASE</org.springframework-version>
        <org.springframework.security-version>4.0.3.RELEASE</org.springframework.security-version>
    </properties>

    <!-- ... -->

    <dependencies>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
            <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <!-- Spring Dependencies -->

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework-version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework-version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-orm</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework-version}</version>
            <type>jar</type>
            <scope>compile</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-security-core</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework.security-version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-security-config</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework.security-version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-security-web</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework.security-version}</version>
        </dependency>


        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-test</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework.security-version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-security-acl</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework.security-version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <!-- Required by spring-security-acl -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>net.sf.ehcache</groupId>
            <artifactId>ehcache</artifactId>
            <version>2.10.1</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-context-support</artifactId>
            <version>${org.springframework.security-version}</version>
        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

    <profiles>
        <!-- ... -->
    </profiles>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <!-- ... -->
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

Answer 1

If you have worked on maven in your projects for dependency management, then you must have faced one problem at least once or may be more than that. And the problem is version mismatch. It generally happens when you got some dependencies which bring it’s related dependencies together with certain version. And if you have included those dependencies with different version numbers already, they can face undesired results in compile time as well as runtime also.

Ideally to avoid above issue you need to explicitly exclude the related dependency, but it is quite possible that you can forget to do so.

To solve version mismatch issue, you can use the concept of a “bill of materials” (BOM) dependency. A BOM dependency keep track of version numbers and ensure that all dependencies (both direct and transitive) are at the same version.

How to add BOM [Bill Of Materials] dependency

Maven provides a tag dependencyManagement for this purpose. You need to add the bom information in this tag as follows. I am taking the example of Spring bom file.

 <dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-framework-bom</artifactId>
            <version>4.2.4.RELEASE</version>
            <type>pom</type>
            <scope>import</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
  </dependencyManagement>

An added benefit of using the BOM is that you no longer need to specify the version attribute when depending on Spring Framework artifacts. So it will work perfectly fine.

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
       <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
       <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
<dependencies>

Similarly BOM for Spring security to use is

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-security-bom</artifactId>
    <version>4.0.3.RELEASE</version>
    <type>pom</type>
    <scope>import</scope>
</dependency>

In your case its problem of version mismatch which I too had faced earlier