Injection of autowired dependencies failed; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException:

Use component scanning as given below, if com.project.action.PasswordHintAction is annotated with stereotype annotations

<context:component-scan base-package="com.project.action"/>

EDIT

I see your problem, in PasswordHintActionTest you are autowiring PasswordHintAction. But you did not create bean configuration for PasswordHintAction to autowire. Add one of stereotype annotation(@Component, @Service, @Controller) to PasswordHintAction like

@Component
public class PasswordHintAction extends BaseAction {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = -4037514607101222025L;
    private String username;

or create xml configuration in applicationcontext.xml like

<bean id="passwordHintAction" class="com.project.action.PasswordHintAction" />

You need to provide a candidate for autowire. That means that an instance of PasswordHint must be known to spring in a way that it can guess that it must reference it.

Please provide the class head of PasswordHint and/or the spring bean definition of that class for further assistance.

Try changing the name of

PasswordHintAction action;

to

PasswordHintAction passwordHintAction;

so that it matches the bean definition.