Spring configuration file gives BeanDefinitionStoreException

Question

I am trying to complete the Spring MVC tutorial at: http://static.springsource.org/docs/Spring-MVC-step-by-step/part1.html

My problem is similar to this one http://stackoverflow.com/questions/266601/spring-configuration-error

However none of those solutions seem relevant.

I am getting the following stack trace:

org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: Line 6 in XML document from resource [/WEB-INF/springapp-servlet.xml] of ServletContext is invalid; nested exception is org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Document root element "beans", must match DOCTYPE root "null". org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:133) org.springframework.context.support.AbstractXmlApplicationContext.loadBeanDefinitions(AbstractXmlApplicationContext.java:125) org.springframework.context.support.AbstractXmlApplicationContext.refreshBeanFactory(AbstractXmlApplicationContext.java:65) org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:226) org.springframework.web.context.support.XmlWebApplicationContext.refresh(XmlWebApplicationContext.java:131) org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.createWebApplicationContext(FrameworkServlet.java:281) org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.initWebApplicationContext(FrameworkServlet.java:229) org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.initServletBean(FrameworkServlet.java:199) org.springframework.web.servlet.HttpServletBean.init(HttpServletBean.java:102) javax.servlet.GenericServlet.init(GenericServlet.java:212) org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:102) org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:293) org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProcessor.process(Http11NioProcessor.java:883) org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11NioProtocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.process(Http11NioProtocol.java:722) org.apache.tomcat.util.net.NioEndpoint$SocketProcessor.run(NioEndpoint.java:2214) java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(Unknown Source) java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source) java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

I have this as my springapp-servlet.xml file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd"&gt;

  <!-- the application context definition for the springapp DispatcherServlet -->

  <bean name="/hello.htm" class="springapp.web.HelloController"/>

</beans>

Answer 1

You probably have some old spring jar files in your classpath.

See also this forum post.