Java XML Tutorial

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.sun.xml.bind.v2.ContextFactory

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Starts a Java project and hits the below "class not found for com.sun.xml.bind.v2.ContextFactory"?

Terminal

Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.sun.xml.bind.v2.ContextFactory
  at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.BuiltinClassLoader.loadClass(BuiltinClassLoader.java:606)
  at java.base/jdk.internal.loader.ClassLoaders$AppClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoaders.java:168)
  at java.base/java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:522)
  at jakarta.xml.bind.ServiceLoaderUtil.nullSafeLoadClass(ServiceLoaderUtil.java:92)
  at jakarta.xml.bind.ServiceLoaderUtil.safeLoadClass(ServiceLoaderUtil.java:125)
  at jakarta.xml.bind.ContextFinder.newInstance(ContextFinder.java:230)
  ... 43 more

Solution

The com.sun.xml.bind.v2.ContextFactory is under the JAXB APIs; Java 9 deprecated the JAXB, and Java 11 deleted the JAXB completely. To fix it, we have to include the JAXB API and RI dependencies manually.

Note
Since JAXB version 3 and above, the packages also changed from javax.xml.* to jakarta.xml.*.

To fix it, we can include the default JAXB RI, Jakarta XML Binding.

pom.xml

  <!-- JAXB API only -->
  <dependency>
      <groupId>jakarta.xml.bind</groupId>
      <artifactId>jakarta.xml.bind-api</artifactId>
      <version>3.0.0</version>
  </dependency>

  <!-- JAXB RI, Jakarta XML Binding -->
  <dependency>
      <groupId>com.sun.xml.bind</groupId>
      <artifactId>jaxb-impl</artifactId>
      <version>3.0.0</version>
      <scope>runtime</scope>
  </dependency>

If we still prefer the old JAXB packages javax.xml.*, stick with the JAXB version 2.x.

pom.xml

  <dependency>
      <groupId>jakarta.xml.bind</groupId>
      <artifactId>jakarta.xml.bind-api</artifactId>
      <version>2.3.3</version>
  </dependency>

  <dependency>
      <groupId>com.sun.xml.bind</groupId>
      <artifactId>jaxb-ri</artifactId>
      <version>2.3.3</version>
  </dependency>

Alternatively, we also can include the EclipseLink MOXy, another JAXB RI.

pom.xml

  <!-- JAXB API only -->
  <dependency>
      <groupId>jakarta.xml.bind</groupId>
      <artifactId>jakarta.xml.bind-api</artifactId>
      <version>3.0.0</version>
  </dependency>

  <!-- JAXB RI, EclipseLink MOXy -->
  <dependency>
      <groupId>org.eclipse.persistence</groupId>
      <artifactId>org.eclipse.persistence.moxy</artifactId>
      <version>3.0.0</version>
  </dependency>

Note
JAXB hello world example

Download Source Code

$ git clone https://github.com/mkyong/core-java

$ cd java-xml

$ cd src/main/java/com/mkyong/xml/jaxb/

References

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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Richard Jessop
2 years ago

Next to StackOverflow, you have provided the most useful information in a brief, clear fashion. Thank you for efforts; they are most appreciated.

1
Reply
Konstantin
2 years ago

Possible this is working but not correct. Because you don’t need to change anything within existing sources. You need to add only proper libraries

I had the same issue on JAVA 11, and solve it by adding this

//JAXB Support for JAVA11
implementation('javax.xml.bind:jaxb-api:2.3.1')
implementation('org.glassfish.jaxb:jaxb-runtime:3.0.1')
implementation('com.sun.xml.bind:jaxb-impl:2.3.1')
1
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Dave Matt
6 months ago
Reply to  Konstantin

I tried these along with multiple different options provided here but none worked. It always shows me ContextFactory not found error for JDK 11. Is there any other setting ? in Intellij i do see this ContextFfactory class is available but in runtime, classloader doesn’t find. Any help is appreciated.

0
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A S
5 months ago

thank you, it helped

0
Reply
Pankaj
2 years ago

Excellent article!

Last edited 2 years ago by Pankaj
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