If you have an action class that implements the ServletRequestAware interface and has the corresponding setServletRequest method to it, Spring will try to inject a HttpServletRequest into it, causing an exception:

Unable to instantiate Action, web.MyAction, defined for 'form' in namespace '/'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.

Caused by:

Unable to instantiate Action, web.MyAction, defined for 'form' in namespace '/'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.
at com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.createAction(DefaultActionInvocation.java:300)
at com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.init(DefaultActionInvocation.java:381)
at com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionProxy.prepare(DefaultActionProxy.java:187)
at org.apache.struts2.impl.StrutsActionProxy.prepare(StrutsActionProxy.java:60)
at org.apache.struts2.impl.StrutsActionProxyFactory.createActionProxy(StrutsActionProxyFactory.java:38)
at com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionProxyFactory.createActionProxy(DefaultActionProxyFactory.java:47)
at org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.Dispatcher.serviceAction(Dispatcher.java:466)
at org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher.doFilter(FilterDispatcher.java:458)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler$CachedChain.doFilter(ServletHandler.java:1084)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler.handle(ServletHandler.java:360)
at org.mortbay.jetty.security.SecurityHandler.handle(SecurityHandler.java:216)
at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.SessionHandler.handle(SessionHandler.java:181)
at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.handle(ContextHandler.java:726)
at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.handle(WebAppContext.java:405)
at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandlerCollection.handle(ContextHandlerCollection.java:206)
at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerCollection.handle(HandlerCollection.java:114)
at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.handle(HandlerWrapper.java:152)
at org.mortbay.jetty.Server.handle(Server.java:324)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handleRequest(HttpConnection.java:505)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection$RequestHandler.headerComplete(HttpConnection.java:828)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseNext(HttpParser.java:514)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpParser.parseAvailable(HttpParser.java:211)
at org.mortbay.jetty.HttpConnection.handle(HttpConnection.java:380)
at org.mortbay.io.nio.SelectChannelEndPoint.run(SelectChannelEndPoint.java:395)
at org.mortbay.thread.BoundedThreadPool$PoolThread.run(BoundedThreadPool.java:450)
Caused by: 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.
at org.springframework.web.context.request.RequestContextHolder.currentRequestAttributes(RequestContextHolder.java:121)
at org.springframework.web.context.support.WebApplicationContextUtils$1.getObject(WebApplicationContextUtils.java:113)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.findAutowireCandidates(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:660)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory.resolveDependency(DefaultListableBeanFactory.java:610)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.autowireByType(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1074)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.populateBean(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:980)
at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.autowireBeanProperties(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:329)
at com.opensymphony.xwork2.spring.SpringObjectFactory.autoWireBean(SpringObjectFactory.java:167)
at com.opensymphony.xwork2.spring.SpringObjectFactory.buildBean(SpringObjectFactory.java:154)
at com.opensymphony.xwork2.spring.SpringObjectFactory.buildBean(SpringObjectFactory.java:128)
at com.opensymphony.xwork2.ObjectFactory.buildBean(ObjectFactory.java:137)
at com.opensymphony.xwork2.ObjectFactory.buildAction(ObjectFactory.java:107)
at com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionInvocation.createAction(DefaultActionInvocation.java:281)
... 24 more

This can be fixed by adding the following to web.xml:

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

But this seems only a workaround and might cause some unwanted side-effects.