Correct usage subclassing a spring ContextLoader for testing - spring

Question

For the integration tests for my spring application with junit I am subclassing org.springframework.test.context.ContextLoader, because I want to use a already present XmlWebApplicationContext for wiring up my test class like this:
#RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
#ContextConfiguration(loader=MyContextLoader.class)
#Transactional
public class MyTest {
#Autowired
public AccountDao accountDao;
}
The implementation of my ContextLoader is as follows:
public class MyContextLoader implements ContextLoader {
#Override
public String[] processLocations(Class<?> clazz, String... locations) {
return locations;
}
#Override
public ApplicationContext loadContext(String... locations) throws Exception {
try {
// Start Embedded Tomcat
EmbeddedTomcat tomcat = new EmbeddedTomcat("mas", 8080);
tomcat.launch();
Context rootContext = tomcat.getRootContext();
ContextLoaderListener contextLoaderListener = (ContextLoaderListener) rootContext.getApplicationLifecycleListeners()[0];
XmlWebApplicationContext context = (XmlWebApplicationContext) contextLoaderListener.getContext();
GenericApplicationContext c = new GenericApplicationContext(context);
AnnotationConfigUtils.registerAnnotationConfigProcessors(c);
//context.refresh();
//context.registerShutdownHook();
return context;
}
catch(Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
}
}
When putting a breakpoint in the loadContext(...) method I can call getBean(AccountDao.class) and everything works fine. However, it seems that my test class actually is not autowired. I debugged a little and stepped through the spring code and it seems that in the method AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.populateBean(String beanName, AbstractBeanDefinition mbd, BeanWrapper bw) the PropertyValues are not set for my class Test.
Maybe, am I setting up the Annotation Processing wrong?
Information to the code: As you might guess and see, I am doing an integration test and therefore starting an embedded tomcat server in order to test my RESTful webservice. How getting the application context with a "hack" from an embedded tomcat is shown in my post here: Getting Access to Spring with Embedded Tomcat 6
I am looking forward to your replies.
Erik

Answer 1

I think the problem here is that you're creating a new GenericApplicationContext, which is not the one that Spring uses to autowire the test bean.