Seam, MDB, EJB and glassfish coming together

The situation seems to be quite complex but I think it can happen to anyone :) So I have a Glassfish 2.1 appserver with Seam 2.2GA. I use several Seam components in the web tier and they interact with stateless EJBs as well, because some functionality has to be accessible through a remote EJB interface.

Injecting EJBs to Seam components are quite simple, just use the @In annotation. Seam will notice that it's a session bean, and use the default jndi name to look it up, as configured in the components.xml:

    <core:init jndi-pattern="java:comp/env/YOUR-APP-NAME/#{ejbName}/local"/>

You can also inject Seam components to session beans, using the same @In annotation. Everything works fine, however, you have to define your local EJB references in the web.xml (on Glassfish), so that Seam can look them up from the web tier as well. Otherwise, local interfaces are not accessible from the web tier. The case is similar for Message Driven Beans (MDBs). Local interface references have to be declared.

If you just use @In annotations in your MDB (or any seam component invoked from the MDB), you'll get NameNotFoundExceptions for "java:comp/env/YOUR-APP-NAME/YOUR-EJB-NAME/local".

You have to declare your ejb reference in your MDB, and the easiest way to do it is to use @EJB annotations in your MDB class. This would be fine, but by default, the JNDI name will be "java:comp/env/your.message.driven.bean.full.ClassName/referenceVariableName", so you have to override it by using the @EJB(name="YOUR-APP-NAME/YOUR-EJB-NAME/local" annotation. By declaring this, Glassfish will make your local EJB interfaces accessible for the code running from the MDB.

Sun Glassfish and Oracle XE Distributed Transactions (XA)

So, we're using Glassfish v2.1.1, currently with Oracle 10g XE, running on a Java 6 runtime, using ojdbc14.jar. And we wanted to use distributed transactions :) We are also using JBoss Seam 2.2, but that's unrelevant, fortunately.

We configured the connection pool to use oracle.jdbc.xa.client.OracleXADataSource, and we disabled 'Return non-transactional connections' of course. When we tried to access the database from our Seam-connected web tier, the following exceptions came up:

[#|2010-10-01T12:09:12.383+0200|INFO|sun-appserver2.1|javax.enterprise.system.container.ejb|_ThreadID=22;_ThreadName=httpSSLWorkerThread-8091-1;|
javax.ejb.EJBException: nested exception is: javax.transaction.SystemException: org.omg.CORBA.INTERNAL: JTS5031: Exception [org.omg.CORBA.INTERNAL:   vmcid: 0x0  minor code: 0 completed: Maybe] on Resource [rollback] operation.  vmcid: 0x0  minor code: 0  completed: No
javax.transaction.SystemException: org.omg.CORBA.INTERNAL: JTS5031: Exception [org.omg.CORBA.INTERNAL:   vmcid: 0x0  minor code: 0 completed: Maybe] on Resource [rollback] operation.  vmcid: 0x0  minor code: 0  completed: No
 at com.sun.jts.jta.TransactionManagerImpl.rollback(TransactionManagerImpl.java:350)
 at com.sun.enterprise.distributedtx.J2EETransactionManagerImpl.rollback(J2EETransactionManagerImpl.java:1150)
 at com.sun.enterprise.distributedtx.J2EETransactionManagerOpt.rollback(J2EETransactionManagerOpt.java:433)
 at com.sun.ejb.containers.BaseContainer.completeNewTx(BaseContainer.java:3801)
 at com.sun.ejb.containers.BaseContainer.postInvokeTx(BaseContainer.java:3619)
 at com.sun.ejb.containers.BaseContainer.postInvoke(BaseContainer.java:1388)
 at com.sun.ejb.containers.BaseContainer.postInvoke(BaseContainer.java:1325)
 at com.sun.ejb.containers.EJBLocalObjectInvocationHandler.invoke(EJBLocalObjectInvocationHandler.java:205)
 at com.sun.ejb.containers.EJBLocalObjectInvocationHandlerDelegate.invoke(EJBLocalObjectInvocationHandlerDelegate.java:127)

javax.ejb.EJBException: nested exception is: javax.transaction.SystemException: org.omg.CORBA.INTERNAL: JTS5031: Exception [org.omg.CORBA.INTERNAL:   vmcid: 0x0  minor code: 0 completed: Maybe] on Resource [rollback] operation.  vmcid: 0x0  minor code: 0  completed: No
 at com.sun.ejb.containers.BaseContainer.postInvoke(BaseContainer.java:1395)
 at com.sun.ejb.containers.BaseContainer.postInvoke(BaseContainer.java:1325)
 at com.sun.ejb.containers.EJBLocalObjectInvocationHandler.invoke(EJBLocalObjectInvocationHandler.java:205)
 at com.sun.ejb.containers.EJBLocalObjectInvocationHandlerDelegate.invoke(EJBLocalObjectInvocationHandlerDelegate.java:127)

[#|2010-10-01T14:20:10.992+0200|WARNING|sun-appserver2.1|javax.enterprise.system.core.transaction|_ThreadID=18;_ThreadName=httpSSLWorkerThread-8091-1;_RequestID=4131aa28-3401-4edd-bf90-54f605bcbb8e;|JTS5041: The resource manager is doing work outside a global transaction
oracle.jdbc.xa.OracleXAException
 at oracle.jdbc.xa.OracleXAResource.checkError(OracleXAResource.java:1120)
 at oracle.jdbc.xa.client.OracleXAResource.start(OracleXAResource.java:249)
 at com.sun.gjc.spi.XAResourceImpl.start(XAResourceImpl.java:222)
 at com.sun.jts.jta.TransactionState.startAssociation(TransactionState.java:305)
 at com.sun.jts.jta.TransactionImpl.enlistResource(TransactionImpl.java:205)
 at com.sun.enterprise.distributedtx.J2EETransaction.enlistResource(J2EETransaction.java:607)
 at com.sun.enterprise.distributedtx.J2EETransactionManagerImpl.enlistResource(J2EETransactionManagerImpl.java:372)
 at com.sun.enterprise.distributedtx.J2EETransactionManagerOpt.enlistResource(J2EETransactionManagerOpt.java:144)
 at com.sun.enterprise.resource.SystemResourceManagerImpl.enlistResource(SystemResourceManagerImpl.java:98)
 at com.sun.enterprise.resource.PoolManagerImpl.getResource(PoolManagerImpl.java:216)
 at com.sun.enterprise.connectors.ConnectionManagerImpl.internalGetConnection(ConnectionManagerImpl.java:337)
 at com.sun.enterprise.connectors.ConnectionManagerImpl.allocateConnection(ConnectionManagerImpl.java:189)
 at com.sun.enterprise.connectors.ConnectionManagerImpl.allocateConnection(ConnectionManagerImpl.java:165)
 at com.sun.enterprise.connectors.ConnectionManagerImpl.allocateConnection(ConnectionManagerImpl.java:158)
 at com.sun.gjc.spi.base.DataSource.getConnection(DataSource.java:108)
 at org.hibernate.connection.DatasourceConnectionProvider.getConnection(DatasourceConnectionProvider.java:92)
 at org.hibernate.jdbc.ConnectionManager.openConnection(ConnectionManager.java:446)
 at org.hibernate.jdbc.ConnectionManager.getConnection(ConnectionManager.java:167)
 at org.hibernate.jdbc.AbstractBatcher.prepareSelectStatement(AbstractBatcher.java:145)
 at org.hibernate.id.SequenceGenerator.generate(SequenceGenerator.java:96)
 at org.hibernate.event.def.AbstractSaveEventListener.saveWithGeneratedId(AbstractSaveEventListener.java:122)
 at org.hibernate.ejb.event.EJB3PersistEventListener.saveWithGeneratedId(EJB3PersistEventListener.java:49)
 at org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultPersistEventListener.entityIsTransient(DefaultPersistEventListener.java:154)
 at org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultPersistEventListener.onPersist(DefaultPersistEventListener.java:110)
 at org.hibernate.event.def.DefaultPersistEventListener.onPersist(DefaultPersistEventListener.java:61)
 at org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.firePersist(SessionImpl.java:646)
 at org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.persist(SessionImpl.java:620)
 at org.hibernate.impl.SessionImpl.persist(SessionImpl.java:624)
 at org.hibernate.ejb.AbstractEntityManagerImpl.persist(AbstractEntityManagerImpl.java:220)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
 at org.jboss.seam.persistence.EntityManagerInvocationHandler.invoke(EntityManagerInvocationHandler.java:46)
 at $Proxy263.persist(Unknown Source)

When switching to ojdbc5.jar or ojdbc6.jar, a further detail came in the logs. The exception above doesn't explain the cause of the OracleXAException (in OracleXAResource.start). This seems to be fixed in later drivers, so in the logs we can see:

java.sql.SQLException: ORA-06550: line 1, column 13:
PLS-00201: identifier 'JAVA_XA.XA_START_NEW' must be declared
ORA-06550: line 1, column 7:
PL/SQL: Statement ignored

Searching for this I got completely mislead. Forum entries say that there is no XA support in the XE version of 10g. Indeed, when I tried the whole stuff with Oracle 11g, it worked fine.

I wanted to try the stuff out myself to see how these XA handling looks like on the API level. I created a J2SE native app following the explanation and the code samples found here http://archive.devx.com/java/free/articles/dd_jta/jta-2.asp and here http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B14117_01/java.101/b10979/xadistra.htm. And they worked fine, on Oracle 10g XE, with ojdbc14.jar. So obviously, the 10g XE version does support XA.

But why is it then that under Glassfish, it tries to use some fancy JAVA_XA package? It's my habit to jump into the source code of anything I can find, and even read the Eclipse class view showing the JVM level code. So I found that from my J2SE stuff, a T4CXAConnection is returned from the OracleXADataSource, but somewhy under glassfish, it is OracleXAConnection. So why is this difference? Browsing the binary of the OracleXADataSource class I found two suspicious properties named useNativeXA and thinUseNativeXA. And indeed, under glassfish, they were both false, despite their default values of useNativeXA=false, thinUseNativeXA=true.

Searching for these properties I found some explanations here http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/java.102/b14355/xadistra.htm#BGBBHCFC and here http://openesb-users.794670.n2.nabble.com/Definition-of-Oracle-XA-datasources-td4461045.html. So, the Glassfish admin console proposes a default value of the useNativeXA=false, and setting this property also disables thinUseNativeXA. So we either remove this property, or set it to true (the additional properties page of the connnection pool properties), and it'll work fine.

So, after all, I should just have read "Oracle® Database JDBC Developer's Guide and Reference" to be aware of this feature in the jdbc driver :) . Hope it'll help you guys.

Logically deleted entities in Hibernate Search

A recent project relies on Hibernate Search with a quite complex entity structure. We perform search on an entity that has several associated entities at multiple levels, and the search matches several text fields of the associated entities. Everything worked quite fine, although with 3.1.1.GA we had to workaround this bug: http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/hibernate/browse/HSEARCH-391 (already fixed in 3.1.2).

The problem came when we started logically deleting associated entities (using a "deleted" boolean field), because the search still matched for text values of the deleted entities, and there seemed to be no proper way to exlude these indexes (and I think there is really not, as the indexes in lucene are 'flat'). Fortunately the hibernate community helped me out: https://forum.hibernate.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1003745

In my parent entities I filtered out these deleted entites from the collections, but this didn't make Hibernate Search drop the related indexes. The solution suggested in the forum was to actually remove the deleted entities from the owner collection, so actually breaking the relation between the entities. This might not be a solution in every case - you might need to keep the relation - but it helped me fortunately.

Using Vaadin with Seam

I'm a big fan of both frameworks. Unfortunately, the direct ajax model doesn't yet integrate as well as JSF does with Seam. I created a model which does the trick, but I'm not that content with it yet (see DAAM), and the implementation is still experimental. For my current project I have to create some simple administration interfaces, for which Vaadin is a really neat choice. And of course I don't want to give up the convenience of Seam.

There's a simple way of enabling Seam stuff in a Vaadin application, as also proposed here: http://vaadin.com/forum/-/message_boards/message/116273. This enables using Seam Contexts and Seam transaction management in your Vaadin application code. Somehow the solution didn't work out for me, so I created my own servlet filter which does the same two thing (contexts and transactions):

 @Override
 public void doFilter(final ServletRequest request, final ServletResponse response, final FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {
  new ContextualHttpServletRequest((HttpServletRequest) request) {
   @Override
   public void process() throws Exception {
    try {
     beginTransaction();
     chain.doFilter(request, response);
    } finally {
     commitOrRollBack();
    }
   }
  }.run();
 }

The transaction handling methods are copy-pasted from the Seam JSF integration implementation:

/**
  * Code from SeamPhaseListener (2.2.0 GA)
  */
 public static void beginTransaction() {
  try {
   if (!Transaction.instance().isActiveOrMarkedRollback()) {
    Transaction.instance().begin();
   }
  } catch (Exception e) {
   throw new IllegalStateException("Could not start transaction", e);
  }
 }
 
 /**
  * Code from SeamPhaseListener (2.2.0 GA)
  */
 public static void commitOrRollBack() {
  try {
   if (Transaction.instance().isActive()) {
    try {
     Transaction.instance().commit();

    } catch (IllegalStateException e) {
     log.info("TX commit failed with illegal state exception. This may be " + "because the tx timed out and was rolled back in the background.", e);
    }
   } else if (Transaction.instance().isRolledBackOrMarkedRollback()) {
    Transaction.instance().rollback();
   }
  } catch (Exception e) {
   throw new IllegalStateException("Could not commit transaction", e);
  }
 }

But this is not all the way we can go. I want to use my EntityManager and other Seam components in my UI code. My UI classes are of course not Seam components (this is what is basically different in DAAM), but we can do a little trick. The methods in our UI classes are usually invoked by user interface events, eg. button clicks. I created a basic event delegate that, before actually invoking the delegated method, looks at the target object and handles its @In annotations. The implementation is quite simple:

public class InjectingEventDelegate {
 
 Object component;
 
 String methodName;
 
 public InjectingEventDelegate(Object component, String methodName) {
  this.component = component;
  this.methodName = methodName;
 }
 
 public void doDelegate() {
  inject();
  try {
   Method method = component.getClass().getMethod(methodName);
   method.invoke(component);
  } catch (Exception e) {
   throw new RuntimeException(e);
  }
 }
 
 protected void inject() {
  for (Field field : component.getClass().getDeclaredFields()) {
   if (field.isAnnotationPresent(In.class)) {
    In in = field.getAnnotation(In.class);
    String name = field.getName();
    if (!StringUtils.isEmpty(in.value()))
     name = in.value();
    Object toInject = Component.getInstance(name);
    if (toInject == null)
     throw new RuntimeException("Seam component with name '" + name + "' not found, trying to inject field " + field.getName() + " on " + component + " for invoking " + methodName);
    try {
     field.set(component, toInject);
    } catch (Exception e) {
     throw new RuntimeException("Count not inject field " + field.getName() + " on " + component + " for invoking " + methodName + ". Is the field declared public?", e);
    }
   }
  }
 }

}

To help binding these delegates, I created an annotation based action binder, as follows

public class ActionBinder {
 
 public static void bind(Object component) {
  for (Field field : component.getClass().getDeclaredFields()) {
   if (field.isAnnotationPresent(ActionBinding.class)) {
    ActionBinding actionBinding = field.getAnnotation(ActionBinding.class);
    try {
     Object fieldValue = field.get(component);
     Object delegate = new InjectingEventDelegate(component, actionBinding.value());
     if (fieldValue instanceof Button) {
      ((Button)fieldValue).addListener(ClickEvent.class, delegate, "doDelegate");
     }
    } catch (Exception e) {
     throw new RuntimeException(e);
    }
   }
  }
 }

}

And that's it. We can now create UIs like this:

public class Page extends VerticalLayout {
 
 @ActionBinding("add")
 public Button addButton;

        @In
        public EntityManager em;

        public Page() {
            addButton = new Button("add");
            addComponent(add);
            ActionBinder.bind(this);
        }

        public void add() {
            // do operations with EntityManager injected.
        }
}

Recently I had to port a solution consisting of several Seam applications from JBoss AS 4.2.2 to Glassfish v2.1. This had some tricky parts, mainly because Glassfish is strict about J2EE standard, while JBoss AS is quite not.

The exception which needed the most time to figure out was the one below:

WARNING: JTS5054: Unexpected error occurred in after completion
java.lang.IllegalStateException: No event context active
 at org.jboss.seam.ScopeType.getContext(ScopeType.java:121)
 at org.jboss.seam.Component.getInstance(Component.java:1999)
 at org.jboss.seam.Component.getInstance(Component.java:1994)
 at org.jboss.seam.Component.getInstance(Component.java:1967)
 at org.jboss.seam.Component.getInstance(Component.java:1962)
 at org.jboss.seam.transaction.Transaction.instance(Transaction.java:39)
 at org.jboss.seam.persistence.ManagedPersistenceContext.close(ManagedPersistenceContext.java:205)
 at org.jboss.seam.persistence.ManagedPersistenceContext.afterCompletion(ManagedPersistenceContext.java:194)
 at com.sun.jts.jta.SynchronizationImpl.after_completion(SynchronizationImpl.java:154)
 at com.sun.jts.CosTransactions.RegisteredSyncs.distributeAfter(RegisteredSyncs.java:210)
 at com.sun.jts.CosTransactions.TopCoordinator.afterCompletion(TopCoordinator.java:2585)
 at com.sun.jts.CosTransactions.CoordinatorTerm.commit(CoordinatorTerm.java:433)
 at com.sun.jts.CosTransactions.TerminatorImpl.commit(TerminatorImpl.java:250)
 at com.sun.jts.CosTransactions.CurrentImpl.commit(CurrentImpl.java:623)
 at com.sun.jts.jta.TransactionManagerImpl.commit(TransactionManagerImpl.java:309)
 at com.sun.enterprise.distributedtx.J2EETransactionManagerImpl.commit(J2EETransactionManagerImpl.java:1029)
 at com.sun.enterprise.distributedtx.J2EETransactionManagerOpt.commit(J2EETransactionManagerOpt.java:398)
 at com.sun.enterprise.distributedtx.UserTransactionImpl.commit(UserTransactionImpl.java:197)
 at org.jboss.seam.transaction.UTTransaction.commit(UTTransaction.java:52)
 at *.SeamIntegrationFilter.commitOrRollBack(SeamIntegrationFilter.java:64)
 at *.SeamIntegrationFilter$1.process(SeamIntegrationFilter.java:38)
 at org.jboss.seam.servlet.ContextualHttpServletRequest.run(ContextualHttpServletRequest.java:53)
 at *.SeamIntegrationFilter.doFilter(SeamIntegrationFilter.java:41)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:246)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:214)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:313)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invokeInternal(StandardContextValve.java:287)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:218)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:648)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:593)
 at com.sun.enterprise.web.WebPipeline.invoke(WebPipeline.java:94)
 at com.sun.enterprise.web.PESessionLockingStandardPipeline.invoke(PESessionLockingStandardPipeline.java:98)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:222)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:648)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:593)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invoke(StandardPipeline.java:587)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.invoke(ContainerBase.java:1096)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:166)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:648)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:593)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invoke(StandardPipeline.java:587)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.invoke(ContainerBase.java:1096)
 at org.apache.coyote.tomcat5.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:288)
 at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultProcessorTask.invokeAdapter(DefaultProcessorTask.java:647)
 at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultProcessorTask.doProcess(DefaultProcessorTask.java:579)
 at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultProcessorTask.process(DefaultProcessorTask.java:831)
 at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultReadTask.executeProcessorTask(DefaultReadTask.java:341)
 at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultReadTask.doTask(DefaultReadTask.java:263)
 at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.DefaultReadTask.doTask(DefaultReadTask.java:214)
 at com.sun.enterprise.web.portunif.PortUnificationPipeline$PUTask.doTask(PortUnificationPipeline.java:380)
 at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.TaskBase.run(TaskBase.java:265)
 at com.sun.enterprise.web.connector.grizzly.ssl.SSLWorkerThread.run(SSLWorkerThread.java:106)

The above stack trace is of calling a remote EJB from a Seam integrated Vaadin application. However, a similar exception was thrown if I called the remote EJB method from a single (command line) client. The EJB method is marked as transactional (REQUIRED).

The issue seemed to be related to this: https://jira.jboss.org/browse/JBSEAM-3778 , althought I have no MDBs in the scenario. Upgrading to 2.2.1CR1 solved the problem.

An Ajax4JSF bug

The other day I had this exception:

15:16:47,296 ERROR [[Faces Servlet]] Servlet.service() for servlet Faces Servlet threw exception
java.lang.NullPointerException
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.Node.trimInitialSpace(Node.java:946)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.Node.trimSpaces(Node.java:1012)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl$ParseInline.parse(ParserImpl.java:1125)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl.parseTag(ParserImpl.java:203)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl$ParseRowGroup.parse(ParserImpl.java:2809)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl.parseTag(ParserImpl.java:203)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl$ParseTableTag.parse(ParserImpl.java:2629)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl.parseTag(ParserImpl.java:203)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl$ParseInline.parse(ParserImpl.java:1587)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl.parseTag(ParserImpl.java:203)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl$ParseBody.parse(ParserImpl.java:978)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl.parseTag(ParserImpl.java:203)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl$ParseHTML.parse(ParserImpl.java:486)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.ParserImpl.parseDocument(ParserImpl.java:3409)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.Tidy.parse(Tidy.java:363)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.Tidy.parse(Tidy.java:261)
 at org.ajax4jsf.org.w3c.tidy.Tidy.parseDOM(Tidy.java:604)
 at org.ajax4jsf.webapp.tidy.TidyParser.parseHtmlByTidy(TidyParser.java:182)
 at org.ajax4jsf.webapp.tidy.TidyParser.parseHtml(TidyParser.java:265)
 at org.ajax4jsf.webapp.FilterServletResponseWrapper.parseContent(FilterServletResponseWrapper.java:594)
 at org.ajax4jsf.webapp.BaseXMLFilter.doXmlFilter(BaseXMLFilter.java:367)
 at org.ajax4jsf.webapp.BaseFilter.handleRequest(BaseFilter.java:290)
 at org.ajax4jsf.webapp.BaseFilter.processUploadsAndHandleRequest(BaseFilter.java:388)
 at org.ajax4jsf.webapp.BaseFilter.doFilter(BaseFilter.java:515)
 at org.jboss.seam.web.Ajax4jsfFilter.doFilter(Ajax4jsfFilter.java:56)
 at org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter$FilterChainImpl.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:69)
 at org.jboss.seam.web.LoggingFilter.doFilter(LoggingFilter.java:60)
 at org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter$FilterChainImpl.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:69)
 at org.jboss.seam.servlet.SeamFilter.doFilter(SeamFilter.java:158)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:235)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
 at org.jboss.web.tomcat.filters.ReplyHeaderFilter.doFilter(ReplyHeaderFilter.java:96)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:235)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:230)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:175)
 at org.jboss.web.tomcat.security.SecurityAssociationValve.invoke(SecurityAssociationValve.java:179)
 at org.jboss.web.tomcat.security.JaccContextValve.invoke(JaccContextValve.java:84)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:127)
 at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:102)
 at org.jboss.web.tomcat.service.jca.CachedConnectionValve.invoke(CachedConnectionValve.java:157)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:109)
 at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:262)
 at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:844)
 at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.process(Http11Protocol.java:583)
 at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$Worker.run(JIoEndpoint.java:446)
 at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

I was using JSF 1.2_13-b01-FCS with RichFaces 3.3.2.SR1. The problem turned out to be with the generated HTML content which Ajax4JSF was sending as a response. We were using a4j:repeat to generate a HTML table, and one row of this table was shown using an AJAX request. However, the default rendering behaviour of a4j:outputPanel is the using of some element (span or div, I don't remember which is the actual default), and the html tidy code above had problems with handling those elements between table rows. You just have to define layout="none" for the outputPanel, then it works fine.

The bug is since then reported: https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/AJSF-158

Using action bindings in facelets template components

When creating Facelets template components, you might face difficulties when trying to pass action bindings as component or template parameters. The problem is that the method binding gets evaluated at the place it is used, so if you write:

  <my:actionComponent action="#{backing.method}"/>

the method is invoked and the result value will be available for named 'action' inside the template. To change this behaviour, I created a method in a backing named 'ELEvaluator':

 public void evaluateMethodBinding(String el) {
  ValueExpression ve = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getApplication().getExpressionFactory()
   .createValueExpression(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getELContext(), "#{" + el + "}", Object.class);
  ve.getValue(FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getELContext());
 }

Inside the template component I use:

    action="#{ELEvaluator.evaluateMethodBinding(action)}" 

And when passing the action parameter, I have to pass a normal String, without the '#{}' stuff:

 <my:actionComponent [...] action="backing.method(params)"/>

See also: http://seamframework.org/Community/FaceletsParamForActionMethod