Why can't I use #EJB with #Named? - ejb

Question

I basically am trying to inject a #Stateless bean with a local interface into a class annotated with #Named! My understanding is that injection is only possible when the injection point is managed (makes perfect sense), so for example it wouldn't be possible to inject into a POJO but you could inject into a Servlet, a JSF managed or another EJB.
I would have thought that it would have been possible to subsequently use it with #Named! However I get a NullPointerException that specifically seems to imply that this in fact doesn't seem possible!?
My classes look like this (stripped for clarity);
#Named
public class EmailUtil {
// Logger-------------------------------------------------------------------
private static final Logger LOG = Logger.getLogger(EmailUtil.class.getName());
// Constructor--------------------------------------------------------------
public EmailUtil() {
}
// EJB----------------------------------------------------------------------
#EJB AuditDAO audit;
// Methods------------------------------------------------------------------
public void sendEmail(
String emailSender,
String emailRecipient,
String emailSubject,
String emailHtmlBody,
String emailTextBody) throws FailedEmailException {
... code removed for clarity ...
// Call Amazon SES to send the message
try {
new SES().getClient().sendEmail(request);
// Create an audit log of the event
audit.create("Email sent to " + emailSender);
} catch (AmazonClientException ace) {
LOG.log(Level.SEVERE, ace.getMessage(), ace);
throw new FailedEmailException();
} catch (Exception e) {
LOG.log(Level.SEVERE, e.getMessage(), e);
}
}
}
#Stateless
public class AuditDAOImpl implements AuditDAO {
// Logger-------------------------------------------------------------------
private static final Logger LOG = Logger.getLogger(AuditDAOImpl.class.getName());
// EntityManager------------------------------------------------------------
#PersistenceContext(unitName = "iConsultPU")
private EntityManager em;
#Override
public void create(String event) {
String subject;
try {
/*
* If the current subject has authenticated and created a session we
* want to register their ID. However it is possible that a subject
* does not have an ID so we want to set it to unknown.
*/
subject = SecurityUtils
.getSubject()
.getPrincipals()
.asList()
.get(1)
.toString();
} catch (Exception e) {
subject = "UNKNOWN";
}
Audit audit = new Audit();
audit.setUserId(subject);
audit.setEventTime(Calendar.getInstance());
audit.setEvent(event);
em.persist(audit);
}
}
#Local
public interface AuditDAO {
public void create(String event);
}
I've tried using #Inject as well but that doesn't seem to work either. Have I misunderstood the specification or just poorly implemented it?

Answer 1

You should be injecting your dependencies. So if your EmailUtil is being manually constructed, injection won't work. It needs to be container managed. So if you use a servlet, or any managed bean, you can #Inject it. CDI injection only works for managed objects.
You can do some additional work arounds, such as manually invoking it against a constructed instance. Take a look at this question for an example like that: Parallel webservices access in a Weld CDI environment

Answer 2

Do you have the beans.xml in the correct location? Injection for #Named (and other CDI beans) is handled by CDI, which isn't started unless you have the beans.xml file in the correct location (WEB-INF for war and META-INF for jar).