Spring root application context and servlet context confusion

Question

I know that I need to register classes annotated @Controller in my servlet context to make my webapp accesible. Usualy, I do it the following way:

Answer 1

WebSocket-related config belongs to the DispatcherServlet configuration one way or another. After all the HTTP handshake is processed by the DispatcherServlet through its handler mappings.

You should be able to go with a single Spring context in a deployment scenario where there is only one DispatcherServlet in the web application. Consolidating the configuration into the root context makes more sense if using Spring Security for example although there was a bug with the AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer (see SPR-11357). Consolidating into the DispatcherServlet context should also be possible but you wrote that you got exceptions. Can you provide the exception details?

It is also an option to have both root and DispatcherServlet contexts. In that case the WebSocket configuration will be in the DispatcherServlet context and it's not possible to inject the SimpMessagingTemplate into beans in the root context. That actually makes sense since there is one SimpMessagingTemplate to go with each DispatcherServlet (or some other servlet). What's needed is a web layer component, perhaps a thin wrapper around service layer beans (like TimeServiceWs the above example) that can also be injected with the SimpMessagingTemplate. This web layer component essentially serves as a bridge.