java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/mail/Authenticator, whats wrong?

Question

Send to Email.java

package helper;

//Mail.java - smtp sending starttls (ssl) authentication enabled
//1.Open a new Java class in netbeans (default package of the project) and name it as "Mail.java"
//2.Copy paste the entire code below and save it.
//3.Right click on the file name in the left side panel and click "compile" then click "Run"

import javax.mail.*;
import javax.mail.internet.*;
import java.util.*;

public class sendToEmail
{
    String  d_email = "[email protected]",
     d_password = "mysamplepassword",
     d_host = "smtp.gmail.com",
     d_port  = "465",
     //m_to = "[email protected]",
     m_subject = "trial",
     m_text = "Hey, this is the testing email.";

    public sendToEmail(String strEmailAddress)
    {


        Properties props = new Properties();
        props.put("mail.smtp.user", d_email);
        props.put("mail.smtp.host", d_host);
        props.put("mail.smtp.port", d_port);
        props.put("mail.smtp.starttls.enable","true");
        props.put("mail.smtp.auth", "true");
        //props.put("mail.smtp.debug", "true");
        props.put("mail.smtp.socketFactory.port", d_port);
        props.put("mail.smtp.socketFactory.class", "javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory");
        props.put("mail.smtp.socketFactory.fallback", "false");

        SecurityManager security = System.getSecurityManager();

        try
        {
            Authenticator auth = new SMTPAuthenticator();
            Session session = Session.getInstance(props, auth);
            //session.setDebug(true);

            MimeMessage msg = new MimeMessage(session);
            msg.setText(m_text);
            msg.setSubject(m_subject);
            msg.setFrom(new InternetAddress(d_email));
            msg.addRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO, new InternetAddress(strEmailAddress));
            Transport.send(msg);
        }
        catch (Exception mex)
        {
            mex.printStackTrace();
        } 
    }

    public class SMTPAuthenticator extends javax.mail.Authenticator
    {
        public PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication()
        {
            return new PasswordAuthentication(d_email, d_password);
        }
    }
}

portion of my controller.java

/* Send to Email will run properly soon */
      sendToEmail email = new sendToEmail(strEmailAddress);

When I run my web application I got this error message saying:

Type Exception report

message

description The server encountered an internal error () that prevented it from fulfilling this request.

exception javax.servlet.ServletException: Servlet execution threw an exception

root cause java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/mail/Authenticator controller.RegisterTenantController.doPost(RegisterTenantController.java:108) javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:709) javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:802)

What will I do now? Can somebody help me to get this web application successful?

Answer 1

Looks like you have a missing jar, maybe this will help you.

Answer 2

You need to add two jars into the WEB-INF/lib directory or your webapp (or lib directory of the server):

• mail.jar - contains the actual smtp implmentation
• activation.jar - needed by mail.jar

Answer 3

While it's possible that this is due to a jar file missing from your classpath, it may not be.

It is important to keep two or three different exceptions strait in our head in this case:

1. java.lang.ClassNotFoundException This exception indicates that the class was not found on the classpath. This indicates that we were trying to load the class definition, and the class did not exist on the classpath.

2. java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError This exception indicates that the JVM looked in its internal class definition data structure for the definition of a class and did not find it. This is different than saying that it could not be loaded from the classpath. Usually this indicates that we previously attempted to load a class from the classpath, but it failed for some reason - now we're trying again, but we're not even going to try to load it, because we failed loading it earlier. The earlier failure could be a ClassNotFoundException or an ExceptionInInitializerError (indicating a failure in the static initialization block) or any number of other problems. The point is, a NoClassDefFoundError is not necessarily a classpath problem.

I would look at the source for javax.mail.Authenticator, and see what it is doing in it's static initializer. (Look at static variable initialization and the static block, if there is one.) If you aren't getting a ClassNotFoundException prior to the NoClassDefFoundError, you're almost guaranteed that it's a static initialization problem.

I have seen similar errors quite frequently when the hosts file incorrectly defines the localhost address, and the static initialization block relies on InetAddress.getLocalHost(). 127.0.0.1 should point to 'localhost' (and probably also localhost.localdomain.) It should NOT point to the actual host name of the machine (although for some reason, many older RedHat Linux installers liked to set it incorrectly.)