I have this problem that I cannot fix.

From my @Controller, i can easily access my autowired @Service class and play with it no problem. But when I do that from a separate class without annotations, it gives me a NullPointerException.

My Controller (works)-

@Controller
 public class UserController {
 @Autowired
 UserService userService;...

My separate Java class (not working)-

public final class UsersManagementUtil {
  @Autowired
  UserService userService;

or

@Autowired
UserDao userDao;

userService or userDao are always null! Was just trying if any one of them works.

My component scan setting has the root level package set for scanning so that should be OK.

my servlet context -

<?xml  version="1.0"  encoding="UTF-8"?>
<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:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
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/tx
http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-3.0.xsd">
<!-- the application context definition for the
         springapp DispatcherServlet -->
<!-- Enable annotation driven controllers, validation etc... -->

<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:jdbc.properties" />
<context:component-scan base-package="x" />
<tx:annotation-driven transaction-manager="hibernateTransactionManager" />

    <!-- package shortended -->
<bean id="messageSource"
class="o.s.c.s.ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource">
    <property name="basename" value="/WEB-INF/messages" />
</bean>

<bean  id="dataSource" 
class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="${database.driver}" />
    <property name="url" value="${database.url}" />
    <property name="username" value="${database.user}" />
    <property name="password" value="${database.password}" />
</bean>

    <!-- package shortened -->
<bean id="viewResolver"
    class="o.s.w.s.v.InternalResourceViewResolver">

    <property name="prefix">
        <value>/</value>
    </property>
    <property name="suffix">
        <value>.jsp</value>
    </property>
    <property name="order">
        <value>0</value>
    </property>
</bean>

      <!-- package shortened -->
  <bean id="sessionFactory" 
      class="o.s.o.h3.a.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean">
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
    <property name="annotatedClasses">
    <list>
        <value>orion.core.models.Question</value>
        <value>orion.core.models.User</value>
        <value>orion.core.models.Space</value>
        <value>orion.core.models.UserSkill</value>
        <value>orion.core.models.Question</value>
        <value>orion.core.models.Rating</value>
    </list>
    </property>
        <property name="hibernateProperties">

        <props>
            <prop key="hibernate.dialect">${hibernate.dialect}</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">${hibernate.show_sql}</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto">${hibernate.hbm2ddl.auto}</prop>
        </props>
        </property>
</bean>

<bean id="hibernateTransactionManager" 
     class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager">
    <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" />
</bean>

Any clue?