Standalone WLS ADF deployment – Be careful which URL you use

We hit a problem with JDeveloper 11g ADF applications deployed to WebLogic Server 10.3 that's worth sharing.

Under JDev 10.1.3 we could access our remotely deployed ADF applications on OAS through a URL similar to:

http://host:port/context-root/faces/page.jspx

...this is in fact how JDev 10.1.3 ran apps on the integrated OAS/OC4J container.

However on attempting to run a new ADF 11g application on a standalone WebLogic Server, if we used a similar URL as above, then attempted to navigate to any other page via a JSF navigation rule and command control, the original page would show, no navigation would occur, no errors in the logs would be reported.

It's very hard to debug without an error at least somewhere. This left us scratching our heads, and a SR to Oracle Support followed.

Turns out under JDev 11g you cannot include the page file extension in the URL any longer when accessing an ADF application (regardless if it's on an integrated or standalone WLS). You must use:

http://host:port/context-root/faces/page

If I'd carefully looked at how JDev 11g deploys and runs the ADF applications on the integrated WLS I would have realised this because that's what appears in the log window, but I hadn't noticed the subtle change in the URL. It's possibly something that wouldn't catch somebody new to JDev/ADF, but more likely to catch us old hands out with prior 10.1.3 knowledge. You're more likely to hit this problem on a standalone WLS as when running applications within JDev it forms the URL for you for the integrated WLS, but on the standalone WLS you need to work it out for yourself.

Note that the JDev 11g Fusion Guide under section 32.9 notes the URL syntax as:

"http://<host>:port/<context root>/faces/<page>"

....but what it doesn't bother to note is <page> should be the page name without the file extension.

Thanks to the Oracle Support staff and the Oracle JDev development team behind the scenes who discovered my error.