Autowired Annotaion is not working of attribute

[DJC_Spring]

Hi Everyone,

I am currently refactoring an existing application to use component scanning and auto wiring to reduce the amount of xml configuration it has.

I have stumbled across a problem this morning that has got me stumped and was hoping someone could help?

I am simply trying to Auto wire a bean on the class attribute, but get a null pointer exception. The bean that I am trying to auto wire is created using component scanning and it is instantiated when I run through debug (breakpoint on the constructor). The weird thing is, that if I try to @Autowired on the constructor or a setter it finds the bean ok..

I created a small test class to demonstrate

web.xml

<context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>
            /WEB-INF/test2.xml
            /WEB-INF/test.xml
        </param-value>
    </context-param>
    
    <listener>
        <listener-class>
            org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
        </listener-class>
    </listener>

Test.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
 	   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 	   xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
       xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
       xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd
		      http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
		      http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-3.0.xsd
		      http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">
   
   
   <context:component-scan base-package="uk.co.test" />
   
</beans>

Class created by component scan

@Component
public class myTest {
	
	private Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(this.getClass());

	public myTest() {
		logger.info("test class created by component scan");
	}
}

Now in this testAutowire below which is created from component scan in test2.xml I try to autowire but get a null pointer?

@Component
public class testAutowire {
	
	@Autowired
	private myTest myTest;

	
	public testAutowire () {
              System.out.println("testAutowire");
		
	}

	
}

However if I add it to the constructor or a setter it works i.e

@Autowired
public testAutowire (myTest myTest) {
              System.out.println("testAutowire");
		
	}

Can anyone advise please?

[DJC_Spring]

I tried this at home last night and created a simple mvc project but I could not get the autowire to work on the attribute too. Am I missing sonmething really simple here?

[Marten Deinum]

Post your project... Also what is in the different xml files, you only have 1 posted.