Why Spring doesn't scan my controller

Question

I want to learn something about Spring. I'm trying to configure it but there is something I don't get because it seems that Spring doesn't recognize my controller.

This is my web.xml

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee" xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_1.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="3.1">
  <display-name>dispatcher</display-name>
  <welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
  </welcome-file-list>
  <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>
</web-app>

and this one is the servlet

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans     
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc 
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <context:component-scan base-package="it.mexpenses.controller" />
    <mvc:annotation-driven />


    <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/"/>
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
        <property name="order" value="1" />
    </bean>
</beans>

Controller:

package it.mexpenses.controller;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;

@Controller
public class LoginController {

    @GetMapping("/login")
    public ModelAndView login() {
        User user = loginService.login(username, password);
        return new ModelAndView("welcome", "currentUser", null);
    }
}

Answer 1

In a typical spring MVC app you will find that there are two spring configuration files, a file that configures the application context usually started with the Spring context listener.

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

And a Spring MVC configuration file usually started with the Spring dispatcher servlet. For example.

<servlet>
        <servlet-name>main</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>main</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

I strongly suggest the use of annotations for the Spring configuration. It makes life much easier and is much more modern ...

You can also generate a project with spring boot and make your life easier: https://start.spring.io/

Refs: Spring MVC: difference between <context:component-scan> and <annotation-driven /> tags?