Getting access to ServletContext at the right time in the Tomcat Lifecycle

[Dan Schaffer]

Hi

I'm using CXF 2.4 in a non-spring environment.  I'm unable to get access to a fully available version of the ServletContext when I 
deploy CXF to Tomcat.  It works fine for Jetty.  I think there is something I don't understand about how CXF plays along with the 
Tomcat lifecycle.  Here is a snippet of my Resource:

@Path("/nevs")
public class VerificationResource {

        private VerificationEngine verificationEngine;

        private Logger logger = Logger.getLogger("nevs.verification_service");

        @Context
        private ServletContext context;

        public VerificationResource() {
                logger.info("starting");
        }

        @Context
        public void setServletContext(ServletContext context) {

The context is not null. However, a call to context.getAttribute("some key") 
causes a NullPointerException in:

org.apache.cxf.jaxrs.impl.tl.ThreadLocalServletContext.getAttribute(ThreadLocalServletContext.java:46)

I AM able to successfully make the getAttribute call later during a GET.  So I could work around this by lazy evaluation.  But I'd 
rather avoid the thread safety issues associated with this approach.

Here is my Application:

public class VerificationApplication extends Application {

        private Set<Object> singletons = new HashSet<Object>();
        private Set<Class<?>> set = Collections.emptySet();

        public VerificationApplication() {
                singletons.add(new VerificationResource());
        }

        @Override
        public Set<Class<?>> getClasses() {
                return set;
        }

        @Override
        public Set<Object> getSingletons() {
                return singletons;
        }
}

Here is my web.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE web-app
    PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN"
        "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd";>

<web-app>
  <display-name>NEVS Development System</display-name>
  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>verification_service</servlet-name>
    
<servlet-class>org.apache.cxf.jaxrs.servlet.CXFNonSpringJaxrsServlet</servlet-class>
      <init-param>
          <param-name>javax.ws.rs.Application</param-name>
          
<param-value>gov.noaa.nevs.servlet.verification_service.VerificationApplication</param-value>
      </init-param>
      <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
  </servlet>

  <servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>verification_service</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
  </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>


It seems like I need to do something with @PostConstruct or something so that I make the getAttribute call later in the lifecycle. 
However I'm drawing a blank.

Thanks for any help

Dan