Tomcat with mysql : “ Cannot create JDBC driver of class '' for connect URL 'null' ”

Question

This question has been asked and answered multiple times but it still doesn't solve my problem.

Host OS is Fedora 17

Tomcat package tomcat-7.0.27-2.fc17.noarch

Here is my $CATALINA_HOME/logs/catalina.out

[DEBUG]: Failed to establish connection with datastore
org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.SQLNestedException: Cannot create JDBC driver of class '' for connect URL 'null'
    at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSource.createConnectionFactory(BasicDataSource.java:1452)
    at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSource.createDataSource(BasicDataSource.java:1371)
    at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSource.getConnection(BasicDataSource.java:1044)
...
...
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: No suitable driver
    at java.sql.DriverManager.getDriver(DriverManager.java:289)
    at org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.BasicDataSource.createConnectionFactory(BasicDataSource.java:1437)
...

Here is my $CATALINA_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost/ABC/ABC.xml

<Context path="/ABC">

<!-- maxActive: Maximum number of dB connections in pool. Make sure you
     configure your mysqld max_connections large enough to handle
     all of your db connections. Set to -1 for no limit.
     -->

<!-- maxIdle: Maximum number of idle dB connections to retain in pool.
     Set to -1 for no limit.  See also the DBCP documentation on this
     and the minEvictableIdleTimeMillis configuration parameter.
     -->

<!-- maxWait: Maximum time to wait for a dB connection to become available
     in ms, in this example 10 seconds. An Exception is thrown if
     this timeout is exceeded.  Set to -1 to wait indefinitely.
     -->

<!-- username and password: DB username and KeyDB password key (not the password itself)  -->

<!-- driverClassName: Class name for the JDBC KeyDB wrappers.  These wrappers
     replace the 'mysql_keydb_key' with its corresponding value from KeyDB
     -->

<!-- url: The JDBC connection url for connecting to your MySQL dB.
     The autoReconnect=true argument to the url makes sure that the
     mm.mysql JDBC Driver will automatically reconnect if mysqld closed the
     connection.  mysqld by default closes idle connections after 8 hours.
     -->

<Resource name="jdbc/last_db" auth="Container" type="javax.sql.DataSource" maxActive="100" maxIdle="30" maxWait="10000" username="****" password="****" driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" url="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/last_db"/>
</Context>

Here is my $CATALINA_HOME/lib directory

$ ls /usr/share/tomcat/lib
annotations-api.jar      commons-collections.jar    log4j.jar                          tomcat-i18n-es.jar      tomcat-servlet-3.0-api.jar
apache-commons-dbcp.jar  commons-dbcp.jar           mysql-connector-java-5.1.0.jar  tomcat-i18n-fr.jar      tomcat-util.jar
catalina-ant.jar         commons-logging-1.1.1.jar  tomcat-api.jar                  tomcat-i18n-ja.jar
catalina-ha.jar          jasper-el.jar              tomcat-coyote.jar               tomcat-jdbc.jar
catalina.jar             jasper.jar                 tomcat-dbcp.jar                 tomcat-jsp-2.2-api.jar
catalina-tribes.jar      jasper-jdt.jar             tomcat-el-2.2-api.jar           tomcat-juli.jar

Here is my WEB-INF/web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
version="2.5">

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>jersey</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>com.sun.jersey.spi.container.servlet.ServletContainer</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>jersey</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/v1/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<resource-ref>
    <description>DB Connection</description>
    <res-ref-name>jdbc/last_db</res-ref-name>
    <res-type>javax.sql.DataSource</res-type>
    <res-auth>Container</res-auth>
</resource-ref>

</web-app>

Executing code:

try {
    Context initContext = new InitialContext();
    Context envContext  = (Context)initContext.lookup("java:/comp/env");
    dataSource = (DataSource) envContext.lookup("jdbc/"+dbName);
 } catch (NamingException ex) {
    System.out.println("[DEBUG]: Failed to initiate JDBC context");
    ex.printStackTrace();
    return;
 }

 try {
     connection = dataSource.getConnection();
 } catch (SQLException ex){
     System.out.println("[DEBUG]: Failed to establish connection with datastore");
     ex.printStackTrace();
     return;
 } catch (ClassNotFoundException ww){
     ww.printStackTrace();
 }

The mysql-connector jar seems to be available in WEB-INF/lib

$ jar tf ABC.war | grep mysql-connector
WEB-INF/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.0.jar

I don't know if this is useful or not but here is the listening port information for port 3306

$ netstat -tln
Active Internet connections (only servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address           Foreign Address         State      
tcp        0      0 0.0.0.0:3306            0.0.0.0:*               LISTEN     

Answer 1

I feel like banging my head on the table.

The problem was that instead of keeping the ABC.xml $CATALINA_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost/ABC/ABC.xml It is supposed to be kept here: $CATALINA_HOME/conf/Catalina/localhost/ABC.xml

The StackTrace was very misleading regarding error with the connector driver.