Unable to instantiate class...because it's looking for the wrong one

Question

I'm using IBM RAD with a WAS 7.0 application server. I'm developing a JSF project using RichFaces components and I'm having some trouble with one of the classes. Whenever I start my server, I'm getting this error in the console:

[9/23/10 15:38:13:182 EDT] 00000016 annotation    W com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.annotation.WASAnnotationHelper collectClasses unable to instantiate class
                             java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.richfaces.taglib.HtmlToolTipTag

I believe the problem to be that HtmlToolTipTag doesn't actually exist. In the RichFaces package, it's named HtmlToolTipTagHandler. I'm new to development, and I'm not sure how to fix this. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The HtmlToolTipTag was introduced in RichFaces 3.1, but since RichFaces 3.2 it's apparently replaced by HtmlToolTipTagHandler. I am not sure about the reasoning (I don't follow RichFaces that close), but fact is that the HtmlToolTipTag is indeed not available anywhere in RichFaces 3.2 and newer according to the docs.

This exception indicates that you've multiple RichFaces JAR files of different versions in your classpath. I'd scan and cleanup the classpath to get rid of the older ones.

Answer 2

Another possibility would be that you have a rich.tld for an older version of richfaces.