Spring Boot Application Could not initialize class org.apache.logging.log4j.util.PropertiesUtil

I am trying to implement the hello world web application using spring boot, gradle and tomcat by following “Building a RESTful Web Service” but have been unable to run make it run so far.

The code is pretty much the same as the one provided on the website, I have wasted hours debugging it thinking there was a bug in the provided code but I still can’t figure out what’s wrong.

I am using Eclipse Java EE IDE for Web Developers, Version: Neon.3 Release (4.6.3), Build id: 20170314-1500

Any idea what could be the issue?

build.gradle

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:2.0.2.RELEASE")
    }
}

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'eclipse'
apply plugin: 'idea'
apply plugin: 'org.springframework.boot'
apply plugin: 'io.spring.dependency-management'

bootJar {
    baseName = 'gs-rest-service'
    version =  '0.1.0'
}

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

sourceCompatibility = 1.8
targetCompatibility = 1.8

dependencies {
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
    testCompile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test')
}

Greeting.java

package App;

public class Greeting {

    private final long id;
    private final String content;

    public Greeting(long id, String content) {
        this.id = id;
        this.content = content;
    }

    public long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public String getContent() {
        return content;
    }
}

GreetingController.java

package App;

import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicLong;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@RestController
public class GreetingController {

    private static final String template = "Hello, %s!";
    private final AtomicLong counter = new AtomicLong();

    @RequestMapping("/greeting")
    public Greeting greeting(@RequestParam(value="name", defaultValue="World") String name) {
        return new Greeting(counter.incrementAndGet(),
                            String.format(template, name));
    }
}

Application.java

package App;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class Application {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.getProperties().put("server.port", 8486);
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
    }
}

Stacktrace

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class org.apache.logging.log4j.util.PropertiesUtil
    at org.apache.logging.log4j.status.StatusLogger.<clinit>(StatusLogger.java:71)
    at org.apache.logging.log4j.LogManager.<clinit>(LogManager.java:60)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory$Log4jLog.<clinit>(LogFactory.java:199)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory$Log4jDelegate.createLog(LogFactory.java:166)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory.getLog(LogFactory.java:109)
    at org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory.getLog(LogFactory.java:99)
    at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.<clinit>(SpringApplication.java:198)
    at App.Application.main(Application.java:9)

Answer

Apparently setting the port number using System.getProperties().put("server.port", 8486); the NoClassDefFoundError exception.

However creating a application.properties file mentioned by @Nitishkumar Singh in the resources folder to specify the port number to use solved the issue.

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Answer