Loading up properties file to a class in Spring - spring

Question

I am trying to load a property file (.properties) into my class, I am following the example in another thread here: How to read values from properties file? - but it's not working for me.
here's my quick implementation:
applicationContext.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:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-3.0.xsd">
<context:annotation-config />
<!-- Load up properties -->
<context:component-scan base-package="com.test"/>
<context:property-placeholder location="file:///C:/dev/workspace/test-project/src/main/resources/appconfig.properties"/>
</beans>
TestConfig.java
#Component
public class TestConfig
{
#Value("${test.key1}")
private String key1;
public String getKey1()
{
return key1;
}
}
src/main/resources/appconfig.properties
test.key1=value
test.key2=value
Starting up my tomcat, I see the following in my log:
00:11:41,985 [localhost-startStop-1] INFO PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer - Loading properties file from URL [file:/C:/dev/workspace/test-project/src/main/resources/appconfig.properties]
However, when I do getKey1(), I get "null".
What am I missing?
Question 2: If I use "classpath":
<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:appconfig.properties"/>
Which directory is that referring to? root of WEB-INF/classes?

Answer 1

I hope you are using IDE like Eclipse.
Check if the resources directory is added to the classpath and it includes all the files within it as well , if eclipse you have to add . in the inclusion pattern
build your project and check if the the property file is available in WEB-INF/classes
To answer your second question
classpath:appconfig.properties -Yes spring will look for the file in WEB-INF/classes

Answer 2

This was silly ...
When I get the TestConfig object, I was doing:
TestConfig config = new TestConfig();
config.getKey1();
Which of course the config object is a brand new object and never instantiated (or injected) with anything.
Instead I am injecting it so it got initialized by Spring framework:
#Autowired
private TestConfig config;