ActionSupport NullPointerException on context

[mklaene]

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:

<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:

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

[antony.stubbs]

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.