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JSF 2.0 + Tomcat : It appears the JSP version of the container is older than 2.1…

Problem

While deploying JSF 2.0 web application to Tomcat 6.0.26, hits the “JSP version of the container is older than 2.1” exception and failed to start the Tomcat server. But the JSP api v2.1 is included in the project class path, why the Tomcat is still saying that JSP version is older than 2.1?


    <dependency>
	 <groupId>javax.servlet.jsp</groupId>
	 <artifactId>jsp-api</artifactId>
	 <version>2.1</version>
    </dependency>

Here’s the error stacks…


SEVERE: Critical error during deployment: 
   ...
Caused by: com.sun.faces.config.ConfigurationException: 
It appears the JSP version of the container is older than 2.1 and unable to 
locate the EL RI expression factory, com.sun.el.ExpressionFactoryImpl. 

If not using JSP or the EL RI, make sure the context initialization parameter, 
com.sun.faces.expressionFactory, is properly set.

Solution

Not really sure the root cause of it, but the solution is include the el-ri.jar library


  <dependency>
     <groupId>com.sun.el</groupId>
     <artifactId>el-ri</artifactId>
     <version>1.0</version>
  </dependency>

P.S This el-ri.jar is available at the default Maven central repository.

Note
The JSF 2.0 released note didn’t mention about this el-ri.jar dependency library, that’s weird.

Updated – 21-10-2010

This “el-ri.jar” is too old, it’s recommended to use the latest “el-impl-2.2.jar”, from Java.net


     <dependency>
	  <groupId>org.glassfish.web</groupId>
	  <artifactId>el-impl</artifactId>
	  <version>2.2</version>
     </dependency>

About Author

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Founder of Mkyong.com, love Java and open source stuff. Follow him on Twitter. If you like my tutorials, consider make a donation to these charities.

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rodebiasi
1 year ago

It helped a lot! Thank you!

R2U-Systems
9 years ago

It could be also possible, that a wrong EL-Implementation was defined inside the web.xml file.
In one case, JUEL EL was implementated, but JBOSS EL was declared. Replacing the broken definition fixed the issue.

Example for JBoss EL:

com.sun.faces.expressionFactory
org.jboss.el.ExpressionFactoryImpl

Example for JUEL EL:

com.sun.faces.expressionFactory
de.odysseus.el.ExpressionFactoryImpl

Victor
10 years ago

After I’ve put the el-impl 2.2 dependency I got the following error:
javax.servlet.ServletException: FacesContext must not be null
javax.faces.webapp.FacesServlet.service(FacesServlet.java:606)
root cause

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: FacesContext must not be null

mahesh
13 years ago

Just some update if someone get the error like me…
I get the El parsing error for JSF Table manipulation example
I solved it put I have include to jars AS suggested by mkyong
el-api-2.2.jar
el-impl-2.2.jar
jstl-impl-1.2.jar

and also one context parameter in web.xml for new EL version

com.sun.faces.expressionFactory
com.sun.el.ExpressionFactoryImpl

thanks Mkyong
for this valuable resource

Archie Medes
13 years ago

“el-impl-2.2.jar” from Java.net>>> Thanks for pointing me to the right direction for a solution to this problem.