title: @Autowired a DAO inside a Validator
body: <p>Is it possible to @Autowired a DAO inside a  Validator ?
  I get a nullpointer when I use it.
  Running this gives me a NullPointerException when userDAO is ivoked inside the validator. I incude all the code and the application context</p>
  
  <pre><code>public class UserFormValidator implements Validator {
  
  @Autowired
  private UserDAO userDAO;  
  
  @Override
  public boolean supports(Class&lt;?&gt; clazz) {
      return UserForm.class.equals(clazz);
  }
  
  @Override
  public void validate(Object target, Errors errors) {
      System.out.println ("User -&gt; " + userDAO.findById(new Integer(1)));
  }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <hr>
  
  <pre><code>@Repository("userDAO")
  public class UserDAOImpl extends GenericDAOImpl implements UserDAO {
  
  public UserDAOImpl() {
      super();
  }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <hr>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
  &lt;beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
  xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
  xmlns:sws="http://www.springframework.org/schema/web-services"
  xsi:schemaLocation="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
          http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc 
          http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd
          http://www.springframework.org/schema/web-services 
          http://www.springframework.org/schema/web-services/web-services-2.0.xsd"&gt;
  
  &lt;!-- Activates various annotations to be detected in bean classes --&gt;
  &lt;context:annotation-config /&gt;
  
  &lt;!-- Scans the classpath for annotated components that will be auto-registered 
      as Spring beans. For example @Controller and @Service. Make sure to set the 
      correct base-package --&gt;
  &lt;context:component-scan base-package="com.myapp" /&gt;
  &lt;context:annotation-config/&gt;
  
  
  
  &lt;!-- Configures the annotation-driven Spring MVC Controller programming 
      model. Note that, with Spring 3.0, this tag works in Servlet MVC only! --&gt;
  &lt;mvc:annotation-driven /&gt;
  
  &lt;!-- Load Hibernate related configuration --&gt;
  &lt;!-- Here you can also add spring security context, if exist --&gt;
  &lt;import resource="hibernate-context.xml" /&gt;
  
  
  &lt;/beans&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Thanks !</p>