Getting NoSuchMethodError:javax.servlet.ServletContext.getVirtualServerName()

Question

I am facing an issue during deployment of a service in Tomcat 8. Getting following error :

Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: javax.servlet.Ser

Answer 1

Assuming this problem appears when you ran the application in Eclipse. Use Dependency Hierarchy view to search for servlet-api in pom.xm

Answer 2

The method getVirtualServerName has been added in ServletContext in Servlet 3.1. See the java doc's method getVirtualServerName.

This problem has 3 primary causes:

1. Your servlet version is older than 3.1.

2. Some other jar has the servlet with a version older than 3.1.

3. Your tomcat version is older than 8

to solve it, you can try the below way.

I. Check your pom.xml for the code below.

  <dependency>
       <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
       <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
       <version>3.1.0</version>
    </dependency>

if your pom.xml has the above code, it would still has that problem. you can do the second way.

II. to check your other jar has refer to the javax.servlet-api jar. for example, the org.apache.santuario has refer to the javax.servlet-api jar. the pom.xml:

<dependency>  
    <groupId>org.apache.santuario</groupId>  
    <artifactId>xmlsec</artifactId>  
    <version>1.4.3</version>   
</dependency> 

but when you look at the maven dependencies, it refer to the javax.servlet-api jar whose version is 2.3 older than 3.1.

so you should exclude the 2.3 version. pom.xml:

<!-- exclude servlet-api 2.3 jar-->  
<dependency>  
    <groupId>org.apache.santuario</groupId>  
    <artifactId>xmlsec</artifactId>  
    <version>1.4.3</version>  
    <exclusions>  
        <exclusion>  
            <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>  
            <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>  
        </exclusion>  
    </exclusions>  
</dependency>  

<!-- servlet-api 3.1 version has getVirtualServerName() -->  
<dependency>  
    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>  
    <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>  
    <version>3.1.0</version>  
</dependency> 

III. spring boot run the default tomcat 7. so define your tomcat version 8 instead of tomcat 7. so add the code your pom.xml:

   <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
        <tomcat.version>8.5.5</tomcat.version>
    </properties>

Answer 3

I had this error on IntelliJ with maven after updating IntelliJ.

I could run the tests with maven but not from my IDE.

I solved the problem by removing the ./idea and project.iml files and reloading the project.