jsfcdiear

Unable to inject EJB in @FacesConverter in EAR

I've got two demo projects with slightly different project structure. One produces a WAR archive and the other one produces an EAR archive.

In the WAR-project the injection of an @EJB in the Backingbeans, @FacesConverter and @FacesValidator works as expected.

In the EAR-Project, the injection works only into the Backingbean, but not in @FacesConverter or @FacesValidator (although all three classes are in the same folder/jar). @PostConstruct is also not working in @FacesConverter and @FacesValidator (but in BackingBean), so I'm definitely missing something important. But what?

I checked/copied web.xml, faces-config.xml and beans.xml they are identical. beans.xml is under WEB-INF in the WAR-project and under META-INF in the ejb-Module of the EAR-project.

The @FacesConverter and @FacesValidator are marked with managed=true so CDI should work.

By default, I'm using Payara, but I tested it also on WildFly and the situation is the same (Mojarra 4.0.7).

I increased the log levels for some ...webcontainer.jsf... classes, but I don't see any error or warning.

@FacesConverter(managed = true, value = "demoConverter")
public class DemoConverter implements Converter<DemoEntity>, Serializable {
   ...
   @EJB
   DemoRemote bean;
   
   int i;
   ...
   @PostConstruct
   public void init() {i=42;}

   @Override
   public DemoEntity getAsObject(FacesContext facesContext, UIComponent uiComponent, String s) {
      ...
      logger.info("[ (bean=" + bean + ") (i="+i+")] "); <-- bean always null and i=0!!!
      ...
   }
   ...
 }
Solution

  • CDI is not EAR-compatible. In case you have an EAR with multiple WARs, some CDI features would work in only one of these WARs.

    Stick to WAR as long as you want to use CDI. In case you intend to share web artifacts (managed beans, faces converters, facelets templates, web resources, etc) among multiple WARs, put them in a so-called web fragment JAR file. Guidelines can be found in Structure for multiple JSF projects with shared code. Real world examples of these web fragment JAR files are OmniFaces and PrimeFaces.

    See also: