Java Spring NullPointerException when accessing Service

Question

I'm trying to develop a small web application using Spring. The problem is that I'm getting NullPointerException when trying to access service object in my controller. How to fix that?

Severe:   java.lang.NullPointerException
    at controller.LoginController.executeLogin(LoginController.java:35)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:62)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:497)
    at org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.support.HandlerMethodInvoker.invokeHandlerMethod(HandlerMethodInvoker.java:175)
    at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.invokeHandlerMethod(AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.java:446)
    at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.handle(AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter.java:434)
    at org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:945)
    at org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doService(DispatcherServlet.java:876)
    at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:961)
    at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doPost(FrameworkServlet.java:863)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:707)
    at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.service(FrameworkServlet.java:837)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:790)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapper.service(StandardWrapper.java:1682)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:318)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:160)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.doInvoke(StandardPipeline.java:734)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardPipeline.invoke(StandardPipeline.java:673)
    at com.sun.enterprise.web.WebPipeline.invoke(WebPipeline.java:99)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:174)
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.doService(CoyoteAdapter.java:416)
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:283)
    at com.sun.enterprise.v3.services.impl.ContainerMapper$HttpHandlerCallable.call(ContainerMapper.java:459)
    at com.sun.enterprise.v3.services.impl.ContainerMapper.service(ContainerMapper.java:167)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.http.server.HttpHandler.runService(HttpHandler.java:206)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.http.server.HttpHandler.doHandle(HttpHandler.java:180)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.http.server.HttpServerFilter.handleRead(HttpServerFilter.java:235)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.filterchain.ExecutorResolver$9.execute(ExecutorResolver.java:119)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.filterchain.DefaultFilterChain.executeFilter(DefaultFilterChain.java:283)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.filterchain.DefaultFilterChain.executeChainPart(DefaultFilterChain.java:200)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.filterchain.DefaultFilterChain.execute(DefaultFilterChain.java:132)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.filterchain.DefaultFilterChain.process(DefaultFilterChain.java:111)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.ProcessorExecutor.execute(ProcessorExecutor.java:77)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.nio.transport.TCPNIOTransport.fireIOEvent(TCPNIOTransport.java:536)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.strategies.AbstractIOStrategy.fireIOEvent(AbstractIOStrategy.java:112)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.strategies.WorkerThreadIOStrategy.run0(WorkerThreadIOStrategy.java:117)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.strategies.WorkerThreadIOStrategy.access$100(WorkerThreadIOStrategy.java:56)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.strategies.WorkerThreadIOStrategy$WorkerThreadRunnable.run(WorkerThreadIOStrategy.java:137)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.threadpool.AbstractThreadPool$Worker.doWork(AbstractThreadPool.java:591)
    at org.glassfish.grizzly.threadpool.AbstractThreadPool$Worker.run(AbstractThreadPool.java:571)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

LoginController.java

package controller;

import ...

@Controller
public class LoginController {
    @Autowired
    private UserService userService;

    @RequestMapping(value = "/login", method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public ModelAndView executeLogin(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, @ModelAttribute("user") User user) {
        ModelAndView model = null;
        try {
            boolean isValidUser = userService.isValidUser(user);
            if (isValidUser) {
                System.out.println("User Login Successful");
                request.setAttribute("loggedInUser", user.getLogin());
                model = new ModelAndView("index");
            } else {
                model = new ModelAndView("login");
                model.addObject("user", user);
                request.setAttribute("message", "Invalid credentials!!");
            }

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        return model;
    }
}

UserService.java

package service;

import ...

@Service
public class UserService {

    public boolean isValidUser(User user) {
        if(user.getLogin().equals("admin"))
            return true;
        else
            return false;
    }
}

web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="3.1" xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_1.xsd">

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

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

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

</web-app>

dispatcher-servlet.xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<!-- was: <?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:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
       xmlns:aop="http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop"
       xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-4.0.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-4.0.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-4.0.xsd">

    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping"/>


    <bean id="viewResolver"
          class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver"
          p:prefix="/WEB-INF/jsp/"
          p:suffix=".jsp" />


    <bean class="controller.LoginController"/>

</beans>

Answer 1

Include <context:component-scan base-package="service, controller" /> in your dispatcher-servlet.xml and remove <bean class="controller.LoginController"/>

Your UserService is not getting scanned and hence it is not getting injected into your LoginController .

By turning on the component-scan , all the classes in the base-package will be scanned for the annotations ( @Service and @Controller in your case) and registered as beans.