SAML Portlet On Websphere 8.0

Deploying the saml-portlet plugin on the websphere throws exception (NullPointerException) resulting saml-portlet not deploying properly.

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Websphere doesn't initialize filters (InvokeFilter) on startup, but rather, on the first call. This is different from Tomcat, which initializes during the application startup. The root of the issue (in Websphere) is that InvokerFilter is not yet initialized and set into the context at the time when used in HookHotDeployListener, which is why there is a null context and throws NPE.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1PM62909

So the workaround is to set the following custom properties in the web container:

com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.initFilterBeforeInitServlet = true
com.ibm.ws.webcontainer.invokeFilterInitAtStartup = true

To specify web container custom properties in Websphere:

1. In the administrative console click Servers > Server Types > WebSphere application servers > server_name > Web Container Settings > Web container .
2. Under Additional Properties select Custom Properties.
3. On the Custom Properties page, click New.
4. On the settings page, enter the name of the custom property that you want to configure in the Name field and the value that you want to set it to in the Value field.
5. Click Apply or OK.
6. Click Save on the console task bar to save your configuration changes.
7. Restart the server.

Once these configurations are made saml-portlet deploys correctly and runs perfect.