no bean named "userDao" is defined - spring

Question

I got this exception. This is my code:
ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("classpath*:/servlet-context.xml");
UserDao userDao = (UserDao) context.getBean("userDao");
And this is my servlet-context.xml file located in /myproject/WebContent/WEB-INF/spring/appServlet/servlet-context.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans:beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
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/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">
<!-- DispatcherServlet Context: defines this servlet's request-processing infrastructure -->
<!-- Enables the Spring MVC #Controller programming model -->
<annotation-driven />
<!-- Handles HTTP GET requests for /resources/** by efficiently serving up static resources in the ${webappRoot}/resources directory -->
<resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/resources/" />
<!-- Resolves views selected for rendering by #Controllers to .jsp resources in the /WEB-INF/views directory -->
<beans:bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<beans:property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
<beans:property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
</beans:bean>
<beans:bean id="userDao" class="it.ex.home.dao.JdbcUserDao">
<beans:property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource"/>
</beans:bean>
<beans:bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
<beans:property name="driverClassName" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"/>
<beans:property name="url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/hibernate_db"/>
<beans:property name="username" value="root"/>
<beans:property name="password" value="root"/>
</beans:bean>
<context:component-scan base-package="it.ex.home" />
</beans:beans>
How can I fix this?

Answer 1

classpath*:/servlet-context.xml will load every servlet-context.xml resource from the root of your application's classpath.
/myproject/WebContent/WEB-INF/spring/appServlet/servlet-context.xml, however, isn't on the classpath root at all, and so Spring will ignore your file and build an empty context.
Try moving servlet-context.xml to be directly under WEB-INF/classes (i.e. to WEB-INF/classes/servlet-context.xml).
Alternatively, move it to WEB-INF/classes/spring/appServlet/servlet-context.xml, and change your code to classpath*:/spring/appServlet/servlet-context.xml