Grails 2.4.3 Upgrade - Spring Security ACl - SpelExpressionParser - spring

Question

Getting the below error while running the app, no issues during compile. Kindly help, how to fix this issue.
ERROR [localhost-startStop-1] 2014-09-26 19:19:19,050 org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.context.GrailsContextLoaderListener.error(213) : Error initializing the application: Error creating bean with name 'flowBuilderServices': Initialization of bean failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.ConversionNotSupportedException: Failed to convert property value of type 'org.springframework.expression.spel.standard.SpelExpressionParser' to required type 'org.springframework.binding.expression.ExpressionParser' for property 'expressionParser'; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: Cannot convert value of type [org.springframework.expression.spel.standard.SpelExpressionParser] to required type [org.springframework.binding.expression.ExpressionParser] for property 'expressionParser': no matching editors or conversion strategy found
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'flowBuilderServices': Initialization of bean failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.ConversionNotSupportedException: Failed to convert property value of type 'org.springframework.expression.spel.standard.SpelExpressionParser' to required type 'org.springframework.binding.expression.ExpressionParser' for property 'expressionParser'; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: Cannot convert value of type [org.springframework.expression.spel.standard.SpelExpressionParser] to required type [org.springframework.binding.expression.ExpressionParser] for property 'expressionParser': no matching editors or conversion strategy found
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:262)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1145)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:615)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.ConversionNotSupportedException: Failed to convert property value of type 'org.springframework.expression.spel.standard.SpelExpressionParser' to required type 'org.springframework.binding.expression.ExpressionParser' for property 'expressionParser'; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: Cannot convert value of type [org.springframework.expression.spel.standard.SpelExpressionParser] to required type [org.springframework.binding.expression.ExpressionParser] for property 'expressionParser': no matching editors or conversion strategy found
... 4 more
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalStateException: Cannot convert value of type [org.springframework.expression.spel.standard.SpelExpressionParser] to required type [org.springframework.binding.expression.ExpressionParser] for property 'expressionParser': no matching editors or conversion strategy found

Answer 1

What plugins are you using? I was getting the same exception when upgrading to Grails 2.4.3 and just narrowed it down (it wasn't easy) to the fact that the Grails WebFlow plugin and the ACL plugin both setup a bean named expressionParser, but each plugin is using a different class... one is overwriting the other during Grails initialization of spring beans. By renaming the web flow plugin's expressionParser to flowExpressionParser in the WebFlowPluginSupport.groovy file, I was able to get around this exception. You could search in your plugins directory for 'expressionParser' and see if you have >1 plugin using it.
I have let the webflow plugin folks know, and a bit more detail here.
https://jira.grails.org/browse/GPWEBFLOW-109