How do you use a Tomcat JNDI JDBC datasource in Spring Boot

Question

I have a Spring boot application and want to deploy as a WAR to Tomcat 7. As part of this I need to keep configuration out of the WAR, so that I can deploy the same war to my stage and production servers and have it pickup the mysql connection via configuration.

To this end I want to configure my Spring Boot app to use a mysql connection configured as a JNDI datasource in the Tomcat instance.

Can spring boot do this and if so how?

Alternatively is this easy to do in Spring 4 without resorting to xml based configuration.

Dicephalous

guessing: can't you use the org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean – Melancholia

Answer 1

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
  JndiDataSourceLookup dataSourceLookup = new JndiDataSourceLookup();
  DataSource dataSource = dataSourceLookup.getDataSource("jdbc/apolloJNDI");
  return dataSource;
}

No "java:comp/env/" its needed because JndiDataSourceLookup internaly calls convertJndiName that add this part. In other clases you should set the complete path.

Segmental

Answer 2

If you're using Spring Boot 1.2 or greater, this got easier. You can just add this to application.properties

spring.datasource.jndi-name=java:comp/env/jdbc/my_database

The relevant docs: http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/boot-features-sql.html#boot-features-connecting-to-a-jndi-datasource

Obsession

This used to work for me but now I'm getting a javax.naming.NoInitialContextException: Need to specify class name in environment or system property, or as an applet parameter, or in an application resource file: java.naming.factory.initial – Mufinella

cbmeeks, Could you solve the exception?. I have the same problem. – Acetone

dustin.schultz, Do you know if Spring Boot works with jndl which are not in localhost. Something like this: spring.datasource.jndi-name=java:comp/env/192.151.101.179:7002/jdbc/Procesos – Acetone

The InitialContext error is really irritating as I removed it using datasource lookup in my configuration but still the integration test fails by checking application.yml when i intend it to use application-test.yml – Epimenides

Answer 3

Here's what I had done.

Add the following to to Application.java

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
  JndiDataSourceLookup dataSourceLookup = new JndiDataSourceLookup();
  DataSource dataSource = dataSourceLookup.getDataSource("java:comp/env/jdbc/mysqldb");
  return dataSource;
}

Then follow the example in https://spring.io/guides/gs/accessing-data-jpa/ to set up the TransactionManager and Hibernate specific properties.

Cancroid

If you're using @EnableAutoConfiguration you a shouldn't need to set up a transaction manager (or any hibernate stuff for basic usage). – Cruise

When deploying to tomcat, I was getting "'hibernate.dialect' not set". Is there a way to set that without creating a HibernateJpaVendorAdapter and setDatabase(Database.ORACLE) with @EnableAutoConfiguration? – Cancroid

Try "spring.jpa.hibernate.dialect" (or "spring.jpa.hibernate." In general for hibernate native features, as opposed to Spring ones). – Cruise

Actually, it's "spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.dialect" (see here), and spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.*" ("spring.jpa.hibernate.*" is used for some specific properties that are most commonly used). – Cruise

Thanks! Guess I should have read the source for HibernateJpaAutoConfiguration too. – Cancroid

Answer 4

A hint for all of you using Spring Boot with an external Tomcat. Please ensure your war doesn't contain any tomcat jars. Multiple versions of same jar will produce hidden ClassCastException manifested by javax.naming.NamingException.

Cotquean