Spring Boot multi module Maven project @Autowired does not work

Question

This is really strange. I started my Spring Boot project as a single maven project and all worked perfectly. Basically it is a Spring MVC app with security and mail.

Then when I saw that some components like service, repository, model will be reused by a standalone application, I decided to split the maven project into sub-modules.

Suddenly no autowiring started to work. After some investigation I found out that I need to explicitly put the packages in my Application of the standalone app:

@ComponentScan (basePackages={"service"})
@EnableJpaRepositories(basePackages={"repository"})
@EnableAutoConfiguration
@EntityScan(basePackages={"model"})

OK, after that my custom classes started getting autowired. But another problem appeared:

org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'userServiceImpl': Injection of autowired dependencies failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Could not autowire field: private org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender service.impl.UserServiceImpl.mailSender; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.NoSuchBeanDefinitionException: No qualifying bean of type [org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender] found for dependency: expected at least 1 bean which qualifies as autowire candidate for this dependency. Dependency annotations: {@org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired(required=true)}
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.postProcessPropertyValues(AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:334)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.populateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1210)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:537)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:476)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory$1.getObject(AbstractBeanFactory.java:303)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.getSingleton(DefaultSingletonBeanRegistry.java:230)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.doGetBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:299)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanFactory.getBean(AbstractBeanFactory.java:194)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.preInstantiateSingletons(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:755)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.finishBeanFactoryInitialization(AbstractApplicationContext.java:757)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:480)
    at org.springframework.boot.context.embedded.EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.refresh(EmbeddedWebApplicationContext.java:118)
    at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.refresh(SpringApplication.java:686)
    at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:320)
    at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:957)
    at org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication.run(SpringApplication.java:946)
    at com.me.newsaggregator.rsscollector.RsscollectorApplication.main(RsscollectorApplication.java:18)
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Could not autowire field: private org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender service.impl.UserServiceImpl.mailSender; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.NoSuchBeanDefinitionException: No qualifying bean of type [org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender] found for dependency: expected at least 1 bean which qualifies as autowire candidate for this dependency. Dependency annotations: {@org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired(required=true)}
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor$AutowiredFieldElement.inject(AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:561)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.InjectionMetadata.inject(InjectionMetadata.java:88)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.postProcessPropertyValues(AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:331)
    ... 16 common frames omitted
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.NoSuchBeanDefinitionException: No qualifying bean of type [org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender] found for dependency: expected at least 1 bean which qualifies as autowire candidate for this dependency. Dependency annotations: {@org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired(required=true)}
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.raiseNoSuchBeanDefinitionException(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:1301)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.doResolveDependency(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:1047)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.resolveDependency(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:942)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor$AutowiredFieldElement.inject(AutowiredAnnotationBeanPostProcessor.java:533)

So it looks like standard packages are not getting autowired anymore. pom.xml of this standalone app:

<dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-mail</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.sun.mail</groupId>
        <artifactId>javax.mail</artifactId>
        <version>1.5.4</version>
    </dependency>

Please help.

Answer 1

A very easy way to fix this: Set the

scanBasePackages

to your root package, to me is :org.umasuo, so that the spring can scan all the class you need to scan.

@SpringBootApplication(scanBasePackages = "you.root.package")
public static void main(String[] args) {
    SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}

Actually, we can have a look at how the spring do the package scan, so that we can know it well.

Answer 2

Finally I got it working. Besides adding the above mentioned annotations I had to:

1. Add the class MailConfiguration into the package where the standalone application resided (com.my.newsaggregator.rsscollector)
2. Add the standalone application base package (com.my.newsaggregator.rsscollector) to @ComponentScan

Here is what I mean:

package com.my.newsaggregator.rsscollector;


import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.EnableAutoConfiguration;
import org.springframework.boot.orm.jpa.EntityScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.config.EnableJpaRepositories;

@ComponentScan (basePackages={"service","com.my.newsaggregator.rsscollector"})
@EnableJpaRepositories(basePackages={"repository"})
@EnableAutoConfiguration
@EntityScan(basePackages={"model"})

public class RsscollectorApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(RsscollectorApplication.class, "--debug").close();
        System.out.println("done");

    }
}

By the way, the same will happen to your JUnit tests. In my case I got an error about Spring Security not being autowired.