If you are getting this error with a Java configuration, it is usually because you forget to pass in the application context to the DispatcherServlet constructor:
AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext();
ctx.register(WebConfig.class);
ServletRegistration.Dynamic dispatcher = sc.addServlet("dispatcher",
new DispatcherServlet()); // <-- no constructor args!
dispatcher.setLoadOnStartup(1);
dispatcher.addMapping("/*");
Fix it by adding the context as the constructor arg:
AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext ctx = new AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext();
ctx.register(WebConfig.class);
ServletRegistration.Dynamic dispatcher = sc.addServlet("dispatcher",
new DispatcherServlet(ctx)); // <-- hooray! Spring doesn't look for XML files!
dispatcher.setLoadOnStartup(1);
dispatcher.addMapping("/*");