Spring - applicationContext.xml cannot be opened because it does not exist

Question

Hello!

I have a Spring MVC application and a problem with JUnit tests combined with the file applicationContext.xml.

In my JUnit test class I write:

final ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml");
service = (TestServiceImpl) context.getBean("testServiceImpl");

The error I get is that aplicationContect.xml can not be found:

org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: IOException parsing XML document from class path resource [applicationContext.xml]; nested exception is java.io.FileNotFoundException: class path resource [applicationContext.xml] cannot be opened because it does not exist

But it exits in the WEB-INF folder. Here you can see the tree of my project with the applicationContext.xml file: http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/2576/treexp.png

So, what's wrong here? Why does the file not exist for the JUnit test?

Thank you in advance & Best Regards.

Answer 1

The ClassPathXmlApplicationContext isn't going to find the applicationContext.xml in your WEB-INF folder, it's not on the classpath. You could copy the application context into your classpath (could put it under src/test/resources and let Maven copy it over) when running the tests.

Answer 2

You should keep your Spring files in another folder, marked as "source" (just like "src" or "resources").

WEB-INF is not a source folder, therefore it will not be included in the classpath (i.e. JUnit will not look for anything there).