Autowired gives Null value in Custom Constraint validator

I hope the solution will help someone:

@Bean
public Validator validator () {

    ValidatorFactory validatorFactory = Validation.byProvider( HibernateValidator.class )
        .configure().constraintValidatorFactory(new SpringConstraintValidatorFactory(autowireCapableBeanFactory))
        .buildValidatorFactory();
    Validator validator = validatorFactory.getValidator();

    return validator;
}

Initializing the validator with SpringConstraintValidatorFactory so that injection works and providing the validator implementation to be Hibernate.class works in the following manner:

1. Your objects will be validated by the library of your choice
2. Your custom validators will be able to use Spring’s functionality while having validation to be executed by Hibernate.

How it works:
Hibernate’s ConstraintValidatorFactory does not initialize any ConstraintValidators unless they are called but SpringConstraintValidatorFactory does by giving AutowireCapableBeanFactory to it.

EDIT

As mentioned in one of the comments by @shabyasaschi To inject autowireCapableBeanFactory you can change the method signature as:

Validator validator(final AutowireCapableBeanFactory autowireCapableBeanFactory) {

or add getter and setter for it in the config file as follows:

public AutowireCapableBeanFactory getAutowireCapableBeanFactory() {
        return autowireCapableBeanFactory;
}

public void setAutowireCapableBeanFactory(AutowireCapableBeanFactory autowireCapableBeanFactory) {
        this.autowireCapableBeanFactory = autowireCapableBeanFactory;
}