Getting a 'No thread-bound request found' error from spring in my web app

Question

I'm getting a 'No thread-bound request found' error in my web app and hoping to get some help. I'm trying to use struts2 + spring + hibernate, and use spring to manage the hibernate session factory, and inject hibernate sessions into my struts actions. I hope that made sense. When the app starts up, there are no errors, but when i make the first web request it bombs out with the 'No thread-bound request found' error. Here's my spring config:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC "-//SPRING//DTD BEAN 2.0//EN" "http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans-2.0.dtd">
<beans>
  <bean id="hibernateSessionFactory" scope="singleton"
    class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.LocalSessionFactoryBean">
    <property name="configLocation" value="classpath:hibernate.cfg.xml" />
  </bean>
  <bean id="hibernateSession" factory-bean="hibernateSessionFactory"
    factory-method="openSession" destroy-method="close" scope="request" class="org.hibernate.Session" />
</beans>

Here's my action:

package actions.events;
import org.hibernate.Session;

public class Listing {
  Session session;
  public void setHibernateSession(Session value) throws Exception
  {
    session = value;
  }

  public String execute() {
    return "success";
  }
}

My only lead is that if i remove the 'setHibernateSession' function above, i don't get the error because presumably spring doesn't bother creating a session if the action doesn't need one (lazy instantiation).

And here's the exception:

Unable to instantiate Action, actions.events.Listing, defined for 'Listing' in namespace '/events'Error creating bean with name 'hibernateSession': Scope 'request' is not active for the current thread; consider defining a scoped proxy for this bean if you intend to refer to it from a singleton; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: No thread-bound request found: Are you referring to request attributes outside of an actual web request, or processing a request outside of the originally receiving thread? If you are actually operating within a web request and still receive this message, your code is probably running outside of DispatcherServlet/DispatcherPortlet: In this case, use RequestContextListener or RequestContextFilter to expose the current request.
com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.createAction(DefaultActionInvocation.java:307)
com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.init(DefaultActionInvocation.java:388)
com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionProxy.prepare(DefaultActionProxy.java:187)
org.apache.struts2.impl.StrutsActionProxy.prepare(StrutsActionProxy.java:61)
org.apache.struts2.impl.StrutsActionProxyFactory.createActionProxy(StrutsActionProxyFactory.java:39)
com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionProxyFactory.createActionProxy(DefaultActionProxyFactory.java:47)
org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.Dispatcher.serviceAction(Dispatcher.java:478)
org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.ng.ExecuteOperations.executeAction(ExecuteOperations.java:77)
org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.ng.filter.StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter.doFilter(StrutsPrepareAndExecuteFilter.java:91)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:235)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
com.opensymphony.sitemesh.webapp.SiteMeshFilter.obtainContent(SiteMeshFilter.java:129)
com.opensymphony.sitemesh.webapp.SiteMeshFilter.doFilter(SiteMeshFilter.java:77)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:235)
org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:233)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:191)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:128)
org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:102)
org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:109)
org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:293)
org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:849)
org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.process(Http11Protocol.java:583)
org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$Worker.run(JIoEndpoint.java:454)
java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Oh and the kicker is that my web.xml does have the necessary context listener, so the http request should be recognised by struts:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app ...
  ...
  <listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
  </listener>
  ...
</web-app>

Solution 1

To use request scope without Spring MVC, you should declare RequestContextListener in web.xml (see 3.5.4.1. Initial web configuration):

<web-app>
  ...
  <listener>
    <listener-class>
        org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestContextListener
    </listener-class>
  </listener>
  ...
</web-app>

Solution 2

If you are configuring your app using Java instead of XML the same conf can be applied in

 public void onStartup(ServletContext servletContext) throws ServletException {
          //add listener
          servletContext.addListener(new RequestContextListener());

Comments

[Chris]

Sorry, when i try that i get the following error: 437 [main] FATAL org.apache.struts2.spring.StrutsSpringObjectFactory - ********** FATAL ERROR STARTING UP STRUTS-SPRING INTEGRATION ********** Looks like the Spring listener was not configured for your web app! Nothing will work until WebApplicationContextUtils returns a valid ApplicationContext. You might need to add the following to web.xml: <listener> <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoade‌​rListener</listener-‌​class> </listener> 453 [main] ERROR org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.Dispatcher - Dispatcher i

[Chris]

Hang on, if i include both listeners, it works! The RequestContextListener and the ContextLoaderListener together works. Is it bad that i'm using both?

[axtavt]

They serve different purposes - ContextLoaderListener load Spring application context, then RequestContextListener provides support for request-scoped beans

[Chris]

Thanks so much! You're much more helpful than the official spring forums. That explains it perfectly, ok great.

[xbmono]

I see this as the solution to fix this error everywhere in the internet but for me it doesn't work. I have both RequestContextFilter and RequestContextListener but no luck. What have I missed?