Why does using spring 3.0 and struts yield: HTTP Status 404 - Servlet action is not available - spring

Question

Using Spring and Struts together gives no error
message in the console, but only a:
HTTP Status 404 - Servlet action is not available
in the Browser.
The logs give no clue whatsoever.

Answer 1

When Struts' action servlet fails to startup for whatever reason,
the resulting error can be as above.
In my case - struts using springs spring-struts integration -
the necessary spring jars (esp. spring-struts) were missing from the
class path of my web application.
The following maven dependencies worked:
<properties>
<spring.maven.artifact.version>
3.0.3.RELEASE
</spring.maven.artifact.version>
<spring.security.maven.artifact.version>
3.0.3.RELEASE
</spring.security.maven.artifact.version>
</properties>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
<version>${spring.maven.artifact.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-asm</artifactId>
<version>${spring.maven.artifact.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-expression</artifactId>
<version>${spring.maven.artifact.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
<version>${spring.maven.artifact.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-struts</artifactId>
<version>${spring.maven.artifact.version}</version>
<exclusions>
<exclusion>
<groupId>struts</groupId>
<artifactId>struts</artifactId>
</exclusion>
</exclusions>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-security-core</artifactId>
<version>${spring.security.maven.artifact.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-security-web</artifactId>
<version>${spring.maven.artifact.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-security-config</artifactId>
<version>${spring.maven.artifact.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-security-taglibs</artifactId>
<version>${spring.maven.artifact.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
<artifactId>com.springsource.org.apache.commons.codec</artifactId>
<version>1.4.0</version>
</dependency>
<!-- Struts 1.3 framework -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.struts</groupId>
<artifactId>struts-core</artifactId>
<version>1.3.10</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.struts</groupId>
<artifactId>struts-taglib</artifactId>
<version>1.3.10</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.struts</groupId>
<artifactId>struts-el</artifactId>
<version>1.3.10</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.struts</groupId>
<artifactId>struts-extras</artifactId>
<version>1.3.10</version>
</dependency>
<!-- be sure to include extra struts modules, as needed,
especially for used struts-plugins -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.struts</groupId>
<artifactId>struts-tiles</artifactId>
<version>1.3.10</version>
</dependency>
Note: if you don't use spring-security you can very likely drop the spring-security related dependencies, also the exclusion in spring-struts was necessary to include the latest struts version instead of 1.2.9