Spring claiming that identical classnames are different - spring

Question

I'm making my first forays into spring and am getting the following error trying to run on eclipse:
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanNotOfRequiredTypeException: Bean named 'model' must be of type [com.myCompany.project.Model], but was actually of type [com.myCompany.project.Model]
Code causing the exception:
import com.myCompany.project.Model;
// some code
public Model getModel() {
ClassPathXmlApplicationContext applicationContext =
new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("client-context.xml");
return applicationContext.getBean("model", Model.class);
}
Spring xml:
<?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:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">
<context:annotation-config />
<bean id="model" class="com.myCompany.project.Model" />
</beans>
The client-context.xml is located in project/resources, the code in project/src/main/
I assume this is a classpath issue, but I am at a loss as to what to do to fix it.

Answer 1

Java and Spring are case sensitive. This:
<bean id="model" class="com.myCompany.project.model" />
is not the same as this:
<bean id="model" class="com.myCompany.project.Model" />
I'd think about some better names. Those aren't very insightful.
I don't like the way you're going about this. You shouldn't have a bean that has to access the app context this way. You'll have to post more code to be sure, but you ought to be wiring that model bean into object that wants it, not doing what you're doing.
The only reason for doing what you're proposing is if the bean interacting with the app context is creating using new rather than the Spring bean factory. Since you're just starting with Spring, I would recommend letting Spring handle all dependencies.