Dependency Injection and Target Unreachable returned null

Question

Hello
I have tried a simple code in jsf 2.
This is it
following is jsp
<h:form>
<h:inputText value="#{MBTest.thePerson.name}"/>
<h:commandButton value="submit" action="#{MBTest.action}"/>
<h:messages/>
</h:form>
following is Managed bean MBTest
@ManagedBean(name="MBTest")
@RequestScoped
public class MBTest {
@ManagedProperty (value="#{thePerson}")
private Person thePerson = null;
public MBTest() {
public Person getThePerson() {
return thePerson;
public void setThePerson(Person thePerson) {
this.thePerson = thePerson;
public void action() {
System.out.println(thePerson.getName());
following is Person class
public class Person {
private String name = null;
private int age = 0;
public int getAge() {
return age;
public void setAge(int age) {
this.age = age;
public String getName() {
return name;
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
But once this executed the page displays (please note that 'thePerson' instance of managed bean is not instantiated, just the managed property has been declared). When the button is pressed it gives me the followuing error
/index.xhtml @12,60 value="#{MBTest.thePerson.name}": Target Unreachable, 'thePerson' returned null
Could you please tell me why?
Off the topic :
Where is the code tags? I can't find it here.

Answer 1

as far as I can see, your Person class is not a managed bean. I would expect an annotation @ManagedBean(name="thePerson") on it. If you don't make it a managed bean, JSF does not know it exists.
If you don't want person to be a managed bean, then simply create an instance yourself in your MBTest class.
private Person thePerson = new Person();