I have an abstract super class bean called FooBean and all of my other beans extend this class. I have wired up my dao in applicationContext files and I want to inject it into this superclass bean so that every time I am inside of a bean, I have access to the dao. The problem is, I get a NullPointerException whenever I try to access the dao in a subclass. The following files show only the relevant config details for spring setup:

web.xml:

<listener>
   <listener-class>
      org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
   </listener-class>
</listener>
<listener>
   <listener-class>
      org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestContextListener
   </listener-class>
</listener>
<context-param>
   <description>Spring configuration files location.</description>
   <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
   <param-value>/WEB-INF/config/applicationContext-*.xml</param-value>
</context-param>

faces-config.xml:

<application>
   <variable-resolver>org.springframework.web.jsf.DelegatingVariableResolver</variable-resolver>
   <el-resolver>org.springframework.web.jsf.el.SpringBeanFacesELResolver</el-resolver>
...
</application>

FooBean.java:

public abstract class FooBean implements Serializable {
   protected transient FooService dao;

   public void setFooService(FooService dao){
      this.dao = dao;
   }
}

applicationContext-service.xml:

<bean id="serviceTemplate" class="org.springframework.transaction.interceptor.TransactionProxyFactoryBean" abstract="true">
        <property name="transactionManager" ref="transactionManager"/>
        <property name="transactionAttributes">
            <props>
                <prop key="*"/>
                <!--
                <prop key="save*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
                <prop key="delete*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
                <prop key="remove*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED</prop>
                <prop key="find*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>
                <prop key="get*">PROPAGATION_REQUIRED,readOnly</prop>
                -->
            </props>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <!-- Definition of service targets -->
    <bean id="fooServiceTarget" class="com.foo.service.FooService">
        <property name="fooDAO" ref="fooDAO"/>
        <property name="adminDAO" ref="adminDAO"/>
        <property name="channelsDAO" ref="channelsDAO"/>
    </bean>
    <bean id="fooService" parent="serviceTemplate">
        <property name="target" ref="fooServiceTarget"/>
    </bean>

applicationContext-hibernate.xml:

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
        <property name="jndiName" value="jdbc/FooDataSource"/>
    </bean>

    <!-- Hibernate SessionFactory -->
    <bean id="sessionFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
        <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
        <property name="mappingResources">
            <list>
                <!--value>com/Foo/model/General.hbm.xml</value-->
            </list>
        </property>
        <property name="hibernateProperties">
            <props>
                <prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</prop>
                <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">true</prop>
                <prop key="hibernate.bytecode.use_reflection_optimizer">true</prop>
                <prop key="hibernate.search.default.directory_provider">filesystem</prop>
                <prop key="hibernate.search.default.indexBase">/usr/lucene/indexes</prop>
                <!--prop key="hibernate.cache.provider_class">org.hibernate.cache.SwarmCacheProvider</prop-->
            </props>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <!-- Transaction manager for a single Hibernate SessionFactory (alternative to JTA) -->
    <bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager">
        <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/>
    </bean>

    <!-- Spring Data Access Exception Translator Defintion -->
    <bean id="jdbcExceptionTranslator" class="org.springframework.jdbc.support.SQLErrorCodeSQLExceptionTranslator"/>

    <bean id="hibernateTemplate" class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTemplate">
        <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory"/>
        <property name="jdbcExceptionTranslator" ref="jdbcExceptionTranslator"/>
    </bean>

    <!-- Add DAO's here and create separate application context for service -->
    <bean id="FooDAO" class="com.foo.service.dao.impl.FooDAOHibernate">
        <property name="hibernateTemplate" ref="hibernateTemplate"/>
    </bean>
    <bean id="adminDAO" class="com.foo.service.dao.impl.AdminDAOHibernate">
        <property name="hibernateTemplate" ref="hibernateTemplate"/>
    </bean>
    <bean id="channelsDAO" class="com.foo.service.dao.impl.ChannelsDAOHibernate">
        <property name="hibernateTemplate" ref="hibernateTemplate"/>
    </bean>

Things I already tried with no success:

• Tried using @ManagedProperty(value="#{FooService}") on the FooBean class field.

• Tried defining a bean in faces-config.xml to inject the spring bean:

  com.foo.beans.FooBean none fooService #{fooService}

• Defined the subclass bean that had the null pointer as a spring bean and injecting the property via the spring beans xml file.

Ironically, I am able to place the following code in the constructor of the FooBean abstract class and the dao is injected (but I don't want to use this code, I want spring to inject it):

WebApplicationContext ctx = WebApplicationContextUtils.getRequiredWebApplicationContext(getRequest().getServletContext());
        dao = (FooService)ctx.getBean("fooService");

(I would have written this as a comment but I don't have enough reputation for it)

If you used @ManagedProperty, then you should also have declared it a @ManagedBean.

Also, I don't see FooBean in any of the applicationContext.xml files, so I don't see how Spring would "know" about it.

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