ActionSupport NullPointerException on context

I've been trying to obtain my ApplicationContext using ActionSupport and am getting a NullPointerException. I'm sure it's something trivial that I'm forgetting, I've just been staring at it too long so was looking for a little help.

Here's my listener in web.xml:

Code:

---

<context-param>
  <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
  <param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value>
</context-param>

<listener>
<listener-class>
org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
</listener-class>
</listener>

---

My (now gutted) BaseAction to retrieve the context:

Code:

---

import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;

import org.springframework.web.struts.ActionSupport;

public class BaseAction extends ActionSupport {

    protected static Log log = LogFactory.getLog(BaseAction.class);
    protected String ctxString = getWebApplicationContext().toString();
   
}

---

Any reference to getWebApplicationContext() in here won't work. I just get a NullPointerException from that line.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem is? I'm using Tomcat 5.0.

Thanks in advance,
Mike

The problem is that the application context is not initialised until your object is intialised.
i.e. - you can't refer to it in your field declarations or your constructor method.
I just hit the same problem you see.