Splitting applicationContext to multiple files

Question

What is the correct way to split Spring\'s configuration to multiple xml files?

At the moment I have

• /WEB-INF/foo-servlet.xml

Answer 1

Mike Nereson has this to say on his blog at:

http://blog.codehangover.com/load-multiple-contexts-into-spring/

There are a couple of ways to do this.

1. web.xml contextConfigLocation

Your first option is to load them all into your Web application context via the ContextConfigLocation element. You’re already going to have your primary applicationContext here, assuming you’re writing a web application. All you need to do is put some white space between the declaration of the next context.

  
       contextConfigLocation 
      
          applicationContext1.xml
          applicationContext2.xml
      
  

  
      
          org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
      
  

The above uses carriage returns. Alternatively, yo could just put in a space.

  
       contextConfigLocation 
       applicationContext1.xml applicationContext2.xml 
  

  
       org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener 
  

2. applicationContext.xml import resource

Your other option is to just add your primary applicationContext.xml to the web.xml and then use import statements in that primary context.

In applicationContext.xml you might have…

Which strategy should you use?

1. I always prefer to load up via web.xml.

Because , this allows me to keep all contexts isolated from each other. With tests, we can load just the contexts that we need to run those tests. This makes development more modular too as components stay loosely coupled, so that in the future I can extract a package or vertical layer and move it to its own module.

2. If you are loading contexts into a non-web application, I would use the import resource.