Spring boot - java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: javax.servlet.ServletContext and cannot start EmbeddedWebApplicationContext

Question

I have a spring boot application (grails 3.1.8), but when I run the application in intellij, I get the following error:

Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Failed to introspect annotated methods on class org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.WebMvcConfigurationSupport at org.springframework.core.type.StandardAnnotationMetadata.getAnnotatedMethods(StandardAnnotationMetadata.java:163) at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassParser.doProcessConfigurationClass(ConfigurationClassParser.java:292) at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassParser.processConfigurationClass(ConfigurationClassParser.java:232) at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassParser.processImports(ConfigurationClassParser.java:510) ... 26 common frames omitted Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/servlet/ServletContext at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods0(Native Method) at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredMethods(Class.java:2701) at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredMethods(Class.java:1975) at org.springframework.core.type.StandardAnnotationMetadata.getAnnotatedMethods(StandardAnnotationMetadata.java:152) ... 29 common frames omitted Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: javax.servlet.ServletContext at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:381) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:424) at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:331) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:357) ... 33 common frames omitted 

I tried to add the javax-servlet-api dependency, as suggested in the constructor threw an exception; The nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax / servlet / ServletContext

But then I started to get:

 ERROR org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication - Application startup failed org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextException: Unable to start embedded container; nested exception is org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextException: Unable to start EmbeddedWebApplicationContext due to missing EmbeddedServletContainerFactory bean. at org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.onRefresh(EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.java:133) at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:532) at org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.refresh(EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.java:118) at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.refresh(SpringApplication.java:766) at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.createAndRefreshContext(SpringApplication.java:361) at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:307) at grails.boot.GrailsApp.run(GrailsApp.groovy:55) at grails.boot.GrailsApp.run(GrailsApp.groovy:374) at grails.boot.GrailsApp.run(GrailsApp.groovy:363) at grails.boot.GrailsApp$run.call(Unknown Source) at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.CallSiteArray.defaultCall(CallSiteArray.java:48) at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.AbstractCallSite.call(AbstractCallSite.java:113) at org.codehaus.groovy.runtime.callsite.AbstractCallSite.call(AbstractCallSite.java:133) at closemytab.Application.main(Application.groovy:13) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method) at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62) at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43) at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:497) at com.intellij.rt.execution.application.AppMain.main(AppMain.java:144) Caused by: org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextException: Unable to start EmbeddedWebApplicationContext due to missing EmbeddedServletContainerFactory bean. at org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.getEmbeddedServletContainerFactory(EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.java:185) at org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.createEmbeddedServletContainer(EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.java:158) at org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.onRefresh(EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.java:130) ... 18 common frames omitted 

Then in this post it is suggested to remove javax-servlet-api: Spring boot - it is not possible to start EmbeddedWebApplicationContext due to the absence of the EmbeddedServletContainerFactory component

But then I encounter an original problem.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

The problem was with build.gradle

 provided "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-tomcat" 

Intellij was not satisfied with the provided

as soon as I switched to

 compile "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-tomcat" 

the application worked

Answer 2

Starting with Maven spring boot target: spring-boot:run

Steps to configure Maven in IntelliJ:

Debug / Run Setup | Click on the + button visible in the upper left | Choose Maven | Install spring-boot:run on the command line

Answer 3

For me, this is because of the tomcat version. I changed the version of Tomcat from 7.5 to 8.5 and the problem is resolved.