Coldfusion web service failing to see component

Question

I've got a CFC that I'm going to access with ?wsdl as a SOAP webservice.

If I call the CFC directly in a browser, my results render fine:

http://server/webservice/calc.cfc?method=doStuff&foo=bar

If I try to access it as a web service:

ws = CreateObject("webservice", 'http://server/webservice/calc.cfc?wsdl');
result = ws.doStuff('bar');

I get an error:

Cannot perform web service invocation doStuff.

The fault returned when invoking the web service operation is:
AxisFault
 faultCode: {http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/}Server.userException
 faultSubcode: 
 faultString: coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFCInvocationException: 
[coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFCInvocationException : [java.lang.ClassNotFoundException :
 com.calculations.calc][java.lang.NullPointerException : null]]
 faultActor: 
 faultNode: 
 faultDetail: 
    {http://xml.apache.org/axis/}stackTrace:coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFCInvocationException:          [coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFCInvocationException : [java.lang.ClassNotFoundException :     
 com.calculations.calc][java.lang.NullPointerException : null]]
    at     coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFComponentSkeleton.__createCFCInvocationException(CFComponentSkeleton.java:733)
    at coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFComponentSkeleton.__convertOut(CFComponentSkeleton.java:359)
    at webservice.calc.doStuff(/var/www/vhosts/server/httpdocs/webservice/calc.cfc)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
at sun.r... ''

The problem is because the doStuff function is declaring an instance of a CFC inside it:

remote struct function doStuff(foo) {
  var objReturn = {};
    objReturn.msg = 'A message';

    // do a calculation
    var objCalc = new com.calculations.calc(foo);
    objReturn.calc = objCalc;

  return objReturn;
}

So my CFC that I'm using as a webservice has got another CFC being declared inside a function. Browsing directly to my webservice CFC works fine, but trying to call it using the CreateObject/webservice route fails, as it can't create an instance of the com.calculations.calc component.

UPDATE:

If I refresh the page a few times, sometimes the error changes to:

AxisFault
 faultCode: {http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/}Server.userException
 faultSubcode: 
 faultString: coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFCInvocationException:
    [coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFCInvocationException : [java.lang.ClassNotFoundException :     
    com.calculations.calc][coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFCInvocationException : 
    returnType must     be defined for remote CFC functions.]]
     faultActor: 
     faultNode: 
     faultDetail: 
    {http://xml.apache.org/axis/}stackTrace:coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFCInvocationException: 
    [coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFCInvocationException : [java.lang.ClassNotFoundException : 
    com.calculations.calc][coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFCInvocationException : 
    returnType must be defined for remote CFC functions.]]
    at coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFComponentSkeleton.__createCFCInvocationException(CFComponentSkeleton.java:733)
at coldfusion.xml.rpc.CFComponentSkeleton.__convertOut(CFComponentSkeleton.java:359)
at webservices.TaxCalc.feed.getTaxCalc(/var/www/vhosts/server/httpdocs/webservice/calc.cfc)
at sun.reflect.Nat... ''

This is asking for a return type, but the init func of com.calculations.calc has return this;

Answer 1

Ok this doesn't really answer the question as to why the error was being thrown, but I've found a workaround. Instead of using this code:

objReturn.calc = objCalc;

I've used this instead:

objReturn.calc.arrOne = objCalc.getArrOne();
objReturn.calc.arrTwo = objCalc.getArrTwo();

And it's working fine. I guess the problem is something to do with the fact that the component can't be translated into data for the WSDL. I was thinking of the CFC as a struct, which it isn't as it has loads of methods attached to it.

So I shouldn't be trying to assign the CFC, I should be using the accessors to access the data inside the CFC.

Answer also on Abobe forums: http://forums.adobe.com/message/4326548