JAI vendorname == null

Question

So I finished coding my application to rotate TIFF images which required JAI to manipulate the TIFFs.

It works fine when working under Eclipse, but whenever I build a fat jar for the library and then create one implementing that (per http://fjep.sourceforge.net/fjeptutorial.html), when I do the java -jar Push.jar \path\to\dir, it runs up until it hits the part where it is compressing and saving:

TIFFImageWriterSpi tiffspi = new TIFFImageWriterSpi();
ImageWriter writer = tiffspi.createWriterInstance();
//Iterator<ImageWriter> iter =  ImageIO.getImageWritersByFormatName("TIFF");
//ImageWriter writer = iter.next();

ImageWriteParam param2 = writer.getDefaultWriteParam();
param2.setCompressionMode(ImageWriteParam.MODE_EXPLICIT);

param2.setCompressionType("LZW");
param2.setCompressionQuality(0.0f);
File fOutputFile = workArea[i];
ImageOutputStream ios = ImageIO.createImageOutputStream(fOutputFile);
writer.setOutput(ios);

if (frontPage == 1)
{
     writer.write(null, new IIOImage(pg1, null, null), param2);
     writer.writeInsert(-1, new IIOImage(pg2, null, null), param2);
}
else if (frontPage == 2)
{
     writer.write(null, new IIOImage(pg2, null, null), param2);
     writer.writeInsert(-1, new IIOImage(pg1, null, null), param2);
}

remaining = remaining - 1;
    if (remaining > 0)
     System.out.println(remaining + " remaining.");
else
     System.out.println("Done.");

It blows up on the first line of that section with the message:

 Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: vendorName == null!
 ....rest of stack trace.

Answer 1

Since I spent a considerable amount of time debugging this problem, I thought I would share my solution here, despite the age of the question. Srikanth's second link was particularly helpful.

Reason for the error

JAI requires a vendor name for some of its deep internals, particularly the javax.imageio.spi.IIOServiceProvider which gets used by many (all?) of the image readers for their low-level IO. It's not picky what the string is, but it can't be null.

Rather than hard-code the vendor name, the ImageReaderSpi class gets the vendor name from sun.media.imageioimpl.common.PackageUtil.getVendor(). This in turn reads it from the jar's MANIFEST.MF. Normally you link against the standard jai-imageio packagage, so Sun's vendor info gets read. However, since you're making a fat jar file, you replaced Sun's MANIFEST.MF with your own which lacks the required information.

Solution

Include the following lines in your MANIFEST.MF file:

Specification-Title: Java Advanced Imaging Image I/O Tools
Specification-Version: 1.1
Specification-Vendor: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Implementation-Title: com.sun.media.imageio
Implementation-Version: 1.1
Implementation-Vendor: Sun Microsystems, Inc.

The values for each property can be anything (I used my specific application/version/company), as long as all six are defined.

Maven

If you were using maven's assembly plugin to create your fat jar, maven can automatically include the correct version numbers and such. Update your pom.xml with the following <archive> section:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
    <configuration>
        <descriptorRefs>
            <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
        </descriptorRefs>
        <archive>
            <manifest>
                <addDefaultImplementationEntries>true</addDefaultImplementationEntries>
                <addDefaultSpecificationEntries>true</addDefaultSpecificationEntries>
            </manifest>
            <manifestEntries>
                <Specification-Vendor>MyCompany</Specification-Vendor>
                <Implementation-Vendor>MyCompany</Implementation-Vendor>
            </manifestEntries>
        </archive>
    </configuration>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>create-my-bundle</id>
            <phase>package</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>single</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>