spring #inject not working in Controller - spring

Question

I am using context:component-scan, still the dependencies are not getting injected.
Here is my setup. ConnectionHelper property is not getting injected in the LoginController class.
WEB-INF/web.xml
<context-param>
<param-name>log4jConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties</param-value>
</context-param>
<listener>
<listener-class>
org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
</listener-class>
</listener>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>vd</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>
org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>vd</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-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/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">
<context:component-scan base-package="com.example" />
</beans>
WEB-INF/vd-servlet.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:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-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/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">
<!-- Configures Handler Interceptors -->
<mvc:interceptors>
<bean class="com.example.interceptors.SslInterceptor" />
<mvc:interceptor>
<mvc:mapping path="/login" />
<bean class="com.example.interceptors.SslInterceptor" />
</mvc:interceptor>
</mvc:interceptors>
<mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/resources/" />
<mvc:resources mapping="/WEB-INF/views/**" location="/WEB-INF/views/" />
<bean
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
<property name="suffix" value=".html" />
</bean>
</beans>
com.example.controllers.LoginController.java
#Controller
public class LoginController {
#Inject
private ConnectionHelper connectionHelper; //this is null after loading
}
com.example.connection.ConnectionHelper.java
#Component
public class ConnectionHelper {
}
Please tell me what's wrong here...after hours of troubleshooting i can't determine the problem.
Update
I changed my configuration and moved everything to vd-servlet.xml.
Quite miraculously I have found that #Autowired works (Injects Dependencies) with this configuration but #Inject does not.
And <mvc:annotation-driven /> is still required even if you use <context:component-scan />, otherwise #RequestMapping is not detected.
vd-servlet.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:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-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/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">
<mvc:annotation-driven />
<context:component-scan base-package="com.example" />
<mvc:interceptors>
<bean class="com.example.interceptors.SslInterceptor" />
<mvc:interceptor>
<mvc:mapping path="/login" />
<bean class="com.example.interceptors.SslInterceptor" />
</mvc:interceptor>
</mvc:interceptors>
<mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/resources/" />
<mvc:resources mapping="/WEB-INF/views/**" location="/WEB-INF/views/" />
<bean
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
<property name="suffix" value=".html" />
</bean>
</beans>

Answer 1

Agree with #Alex, just that the file where you are missing <context:component-scan/> or <context:annotation-config/> is not applicationContext.xml file but vd-servlet.xml file.
Either <context:annnotation-config/> or <context:component-scan/> will register a AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor responsible for handling #Autowired, #Resource, #Inject annotations

Answer 2

I believe that your applicationContext.xml is missing:
<context:annotation-config>
this registers Springs post processors for annotation based configuration.

Answer 3

You need to add getters and setters to the LoginController. Another option is to make connectionHelper a protected variable. This is how Spring "sees" the property to be injected.
In LoginController:
#Inject
private ConnectionHelper connectionHelper;
public ConnectionHelper getConnectionHelper() {
return connectionHelper;
}
public void setConnectionHelper(ConnectionHelper connectionHelper) {
this.connectionHelper = connectionHelper;
}