I can't autowire repository in spring

Question

I am trying to autowire repository in controller using spring annotation. I am getting error org.springframework.data.repository.query.QueryByExampleExecutor class not found for which I couldn't find a solution.

Error that I am getting:

SEVERE: Exception sending context initialized event to listener instance of class org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'articleController': Injection of autowired dependencies failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Could not autowire field: private com.payforeign.article.ArticleRepository com.payforeign.article.ArticleController.repository; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'articleRepository': Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/springframework/data/repository/query/QueryByExampleExecutor

Controller

package com.payforeign.article;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/service")
public class ArticleController {

   @Autowired
   private ArticleRepository repository;

   //controller methods
}

Repository

I have annotated repository with @Repository. According to spring documentation I am having only repository interface. Is it correct?

package com.payforeign.article;

import org.springframework.data.repository.CrudRepository;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;

@Repository
public interface ArticleRepository extends CrudRepository<Article, Long> {}

applicationContext.xml

I have included jpa:repositories with correct base-package and component-scan. I have specified that it is annotation driven (<mvc:annotation-driven /> <tx:annotation-driven />) and added JDBC and JPA settings. My applicationContext.xml is correctly loaded from web.xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>
<beans ...>
    <context:component-scan base-package="com.payforeign,com.payforeign.article" />
    <mvc:annotation-driven />
    <jpa:repositories base-package="com.payforeign.article" />

    <!-- Data Source -->
    <bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close" >
        <property name="driverClassName" value="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver" />
        <property name="url" value="jdbc:mysql://localhost/payforeign" />
        <property name="username" value="root" />
        <property name="password" value="" />
    </bean>

    <!-- Hibernate -->
    <bean id="entityManagerFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
        <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
        <property name="packagesToScan" value="com.payforeign.article" />
        <property name="jpaVendorAdapter">
            <bean class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.vendor.HibernateJpaVendorAdapter">
                <property name="showSql" value="true" />
                <property name="generateDdl" value="true" />
                <property name="database" value="MYSQL" />
            </bean>
        </property>
    </bean>

    <!-- enable the configuration of transactional behavior based on annotations -->
    <tx:annotation-driven />
    <bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager">
        <property name="entityManagerFactory" ref="entityManagerFactory" />
    </bean>
</beans>

Solution

Your issue is about dependencies.

The class, you are looking for is here: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-data-jpa/blob/master/src/main/java/org/springframework/data/jpa/repository/JpaRepository.java

As you can see, the latest version of spring-data-jpa has it, therefore you should either upgrade your failing delendency to the latest version or downdrade spring-data-jpa version a little bit (not recommended).

I had similar problem in my application with spring boot and mongoDB jpa repositories.

As example, I have spring-data-jpa and spring-data-mongodb dependencies:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency> 
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.data</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-data-mongodb</artifactId>
    <version>1.9.2.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

But spring boot spring-boot-starter-data-jpa implicitly uses an older version of spring-data-mongodb than 1.9.2.RELEASE. The easiest way to fix was to downgrade spring-data-mongodb to 1.8.4.RELEASE version.

Comments

[duffymo]

The stack trace is clear: You're missing the Spring Data JARs from your CLASSPATH.

[chrylis -cautiouslyoptimistic-]

NoClassDefFoundError nearly always means a version mismatch. In this case, I believe you need the RC versions (or at least the very latest release versions) to get query-by-example.

[Black]

I have upgraded spring-data-commons from version 1.11.4 to 1.12.1 and it fixed the issue. Thanks @chrylis

[Black]

According to answer on http://stackoverflow.com/a/7456501/1997088 <context:component-scan> can do job of <context:annotation-config/> and annotation-config is then not required

[sreejagaths]

I was referring multiple spring-data dependencies namely spring-boot-starter-data-jpa and spring-boot-starter-data-rest, from my pom, which caused the trouble. Removal of the unwanted solved the issue in my case. This answer helped me getting this idea.