Error when creating JpaRepository - spring

Question

I have a webapp with Spring Data JPA. I created repositories that extends JpaRepository for some entitites. But when I try to deploy the application I am getting the following errors. Not sure why its throwing up the error
Application Error logs:
ERROR org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader - Context initialization failed
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'entityManagerFactoryTest' defined in file [C:\Tomcat\apache-tomcat-7.0.53-internal\webapps\appTest\WEB-INF\classes\applicationContext.xml]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1553)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:539)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:475)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:302)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:228)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:298)
.....
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:744)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.hibernate.cfg.annotations.CollectionBinder.bindCollectionSecondPass(CollectionBinder.java:1456)
at org.hibernate.cfg.annotations.CollectionBinder.bindOneToManySecondPass(CollectionBinder.java:864)
at org.hibernate.cfg.annotations.CollectionBinder.bindStarToManySecondPass(CollectionBinder.java:779)
at org.hibernate.cfg.annotations.CollectionBinder$1.secondPass(CollectionBinder.java:728)
at org.hibernate.cfg.CollectionSecondPass.doSecondPass(CollectionSecondPass.java:70)
at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.originalSecondPassCompile(Configuration.java:1695)
at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.secondPassCompile(Configuration.java:1424)
at org.hibernate.cfg.Configuration.buildSessionFactory(Configuration.java:1844)
at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl$4.perform(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:850)
at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl$4.perform(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:843)
at org.hibernate.boot.registry.classloading.internal.ClassLoaderServiceImpl.withTccl(ClassLoaderServiceImpl.java:397)
at org.hibernate.jpa.boot.internal.EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.build(EntityManagerFactoryBuilderImpl.java:842)
at org.hibernate.jpa.HibernatePersistenceProvider.createContainerEntityManagerFactory(HibernatePersistenceProvider.java:150)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.createNativeEntityManagerFactory(LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:336)
at org.springframework.orm.jpa.AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.afterPropertiesSet(AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean.java:318)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.invokeInitMethods(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1612)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.initializeBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1549)
... 25 more
pom.xml
<properties>
<spring.framework.version>4.0.6.RELEASE</spring.framework.version>
<spring-data-jpa>1.6.1.RELEASE</spring-data-jpa>
<hibernate-core>4.3.4.Final</hibernate-core>
<hibernate-validator>5.1.0.Final</hibernate-validator>
<hibernate-entitymanager>4.3.4.Final</hibernate-entitymanager>
</properties>
....
<!-- Spring -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-orm</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-jdbc</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-tx</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-oxm</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-jms</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-test</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-data-jpa</artifactId>
<version>${spring-data-jpa}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>net.sourceforge.jtds</groupId>
<artifactId>jtds</artifactId>
<version>${jtds}</version>
</dependency>
<!-- hibernate -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
<artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
<version>${hibernate-core}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
<artifactId>hibernate-validator</artifactId>
<version>${hibernate-validator}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
<artifactId>hibernate-entitymanager</artifactId>
<version>${hibernate-entitymanager}</version>
</dependency>
...
applicationContext.xml
<beans xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
xmlns:jpa="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa"
xmlns:task="http://www.springframework.org/schema/task"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.2.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-3.2.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa/spring-jpa.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.2.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/task http://www.springframework.org/schema/task/spring-task-3.2.xsd">
<context:component-scan base-package="uk.ac.universityName" />
<jpa:repositories base-package="uk.ac.universityName.dao.etocbrs"
entity-manager-factory-ref="entityManagerFactoryTest"
transaction-manager-ref="transactionManagerEtocBrs" />
<bean class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.support.PersistenceAnnotationBeanPostProcessor" />
<!-- ETOC_BRS JPA Entity Manager Factory -->
<bean id="entityManagerFactoryTest" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
<property name="persistenceUnitName" value="persistenceUnitEtocBrs"/>
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSourceEtocBrs"/>
<property name="persistenceProviderClass" value="org.hibernate.jpa.HibernatePersistenceProvider"/>
<property name="jpaProperties">
<props>
<prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.SQLServerDialect</prop>
<prop key="hibernate.connection.charSet">UTF-8</prop>
<prop key="hibernate.show_sql">true</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
......
persistence.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<persistence xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence http://java.sun.com/xml/ns /persistence/persistence_2_0.xsd"
version="2.0">
<persistence-unit name="persistenceUnitEtocBrs" />
<persistence-unit name="persistenceUnitEtocAdmin" />
</persistence>
JpaRepository Interface
import org.springframework.data.domain.Pageable;
import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.Query;
import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository;
import uk.ac.universityName.model.etocbrs.Item;
public interface ItemRepository extends JpaRepository<Item, Long> {
#Query("SELECT e FROM Item e")
List<Item> findUnprocessed(Pageable pageable);
}

Answer 1

This is my suggestion, It seems that spring can not instantiate the entitymanager, so please try to use your persistence.xml as follows.
<persistence-unit name="persistenceUnitEtocBrs" transaction-type="RESOURCE_LOCAL">
<provider>org.hibernate.ejb.HibernatePersistence</provider>
<class>where.your.item.class.is.Item</class>
<exclude-unlisted-classes>true</exclude-unlisted-classes>
<properties>
<property name="hibernate.dialect" value="org.hibernate.dialect.SQLServerDialect" />
<property name="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto" value="validate" />
<property name="hibernate.ejb.naming_strategy" value="org.hibernate.cfg.ImprovedNamingStrategy" />
<property name="hibernate.connection.charSet" value="UTF-8" />
<property name="hibernate.show_sql" value="false" />
</properties>
</persistence-unit>
Also I'm not sure if you need to do something different for spring4.0 the above works for.
<spring.data.version>1.3.1.RELEASE</spring.data.version>
<spring.version>3.2.5.RELEASE</spring.version>
<hibernate.version>4.2.0.Final</hibernate.version>

Answer 2

There was some mistake in the entity clasess and I have fixed it by correct mapping between them.