"No Session found for current thread" when adding #Autowire - spring

Question

I've seen several similar questions, but none of the suggested solutions helped me.
Summary: when I create and inject the beans on the .xml, it works; but when I use #Autowire or #Resource, it doesn't.
Environment: Spring3, Hibernate4, Tomcat7.
Details: the following setup DOES work:
web.xml:
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>
/WEB-INF/spring/root-context.xml
/WEB-INF/spring/security-context.xml
/WEB-INF/spring/users-context.xml
</param-value>
</context-param>
root-context.xml:
<bean id="dataSource"
class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
<property name="driverClassName" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" />
<property name="url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/venus" />
<property name="username" value="root" />
<property name="password" value="" />
</bean>
<bean id="sessionFactory"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
<property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
<property name="packagesToScan" value="com.airbus.genesis.marte.dal" />
<property name="hibernateProperties">
<props>
<prop key="hibernate.dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLDialect</prop>
<prop key="hibernate.show_sql">true</prop>
</props>
</property>
</bean>
<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="txManager" />
<bean id="txManager"
class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.HibernateTransactionManager">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" />
</bean>
users-context.xml:
<bean id="usersDAO" class="com.airbus.genesis.marte.dal.users.UsersDAO">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" />
</bean>
BL object:
#Service("usersManager")
#Transactional(readOnly = true)
public class UsersManager implements IUsersManager {
#Autowired
#Qualifier("usersDAO")
private IUsersDAO usersDAO;
#Override
public List<User> getUsers() {
return usersDAO.getUsers();
}
}
DAO object (notice that #Repository and #Resource are commented):
//#Repository("usersDAO")
#Transactional(readOnly = true)
public class UsersDAO implements IUsersDAO {
// #Resource(name = "sessionFactory")
private SessionFactory sessionFactory;
#Override
public List<User> getUsers() {
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
List<User> res = (List<User>) getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession()
.createQuery("from User").list();
return res;
}
public SessionFactory getSessionFactory() {
return sessionFactory;
}
public void setSessionFactory(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {
this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
}
}
But the following one DOES NOT work:
users-context.xml:
<!--
<bean id="usersDAO" class="com.airbus.genesis.marte.dal.users.UsersDAO">
<property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" />
</bean>
-->
DAO object (notice that #Repository and #Resource are uncommented now):
#Repository("usersDAO")
#Transactional(readOnly = true)
public class UsersDAO implements IUsersDAO {
#Resource(name = "sessionFactory")
private SessionFactory sessionFactory;
#Override
public List<User> getUsers() {
#SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
List<User> res = (List<User>) getSessionFactory().getCurrentSession()
.createQuery("from User").list();
return res;
}
public SessionFactory getSessionFactory() {
return sessionFactory;
}
public void setSessionFactory(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {
this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
}
}
org.hibernate.HibernateException: No Session found for current thread is raised:
org.hibernate.HibernateException: No Session found for current thread
org.springframework.orm.hibernate4.SpringSessionContext.currentSession(SpringSessionContext.java:97)
org.hibernate.internal.SessionFactoryImpl.getCurrentSession(SessionFactoryImpl.java:941)
com.airbus.genesis.marte.dal.users.UsersDAO.getUsers(UsersDAO.java:23)
com.airbus.genesis.marte.bl.users.UsersManager.getUsers(UsersManager.java:22)
[...]
The same happens if I use #Autowire instead of #Resource.
I guess it is some kind of misunderstanding on my side, but cannot find where. Any idea?

Answer 1

The problem is likely that #Repository and #Service annotations are being picked up in the dispatcher-servlet.xml configuration (do you use context:component-scan?), so these beans are created in the dispatcher servlet context instead of the root web app context.
A good practice is to put your service layer objects to the dedicated packages and use the specific package name as <context:component-scan/> base-package qualifier (like 'com.myproject.services'). You can also use filter expressions to include and exclude elements see examples here : #Service are constructed twice
and 4.10.3 section of the Spring documentation
See also Difference between applicationContext.xml and spring-servlet.xml in Spring Framework