spring + struts2, inject DAO into external thread

I have a web application that uses Struts2 + Spring for the resource injection, basically my DAO. Now I would like to create a thread that periodically polls the database and, if needed, send email notifications to users.

I would like to know how I can implement this in a way that this thread can use my DAO. I haven't been able to manage Spring to inject it the way I've done it. So I would like to hear suggestions and see if someone can point me to the right way.

Right now I have a thread started by a ServletContextListener, that just creates a timer and schedules an action every 5 minutes. But I can't get this action to use my DAO. I don't have any need to use this structure, I'm open to using whichever solution works.

Thanks for your help!

Edit: As axtavt suggested, I used Spring task Exe开发者_开发知识库cution Scheduling and it works perfectly, the thing is that my task gets injected with the DAO but then I get LazyInitializationException every time I try to access a property of my fetched objects, any suggestion on how to solve that??

Perhaps the best option is to use Spring's own scheduling support, see 25. Task Execution and Scheduling (if necessary - with Quartz, see 25.6 Using the OpenSymphony Quartz Scheduler). This apporach allows you to configure your scheduled action as Spring beans, so you can wire them with other beans such as DAO.

Alternatively, you can use the following to obtain any Spring bean in web application (for example, to obtain DAO from your thread):

WebApplicationContextUtils.getWebApplicationContext(servletContext).getBean(...)