Difference between applicationContext.xml and spring-servlet.xml in Spring Framework

Question

• Are applicationContext.xml and spring-servlet.xml related anyhow in Spring Framework?
  
• Will the properties files declared in

Answer 1

In Servlet technology if you want to pass any input to a particular servlet then you need to pass in init param like below code.

 
    DBController
    com.test.controller.DBController
    
        username
        John
    
    1



    DBController
    /DBController

If you want to pass some in put that is common for all servlets then that time you need to configure context param. Example

 
    email
    admin@example.com

SO exactly like this when ever we are working with Spring MVC we need to provide some information to Predefined servlet provided by Spring that is DispatcherServlet through init param. So the configuration is as fallows, here we are providing the spring-servlet.xml as init parameter to DispatcherServlet.

 

    Spring MVC App

    
        SpringController
        org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
        
            contextConfigLocation
            /WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml
        
        1
    

    
        SpringController
        *.htm
    

Again we need some context param. That is applicable for whole application. So we can provide the root context that is applicationcontext.xml The configuration is like this:

    
    contextConfigLocation
    /WEB-INF/applicationcontext.xml


    org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener



        SpringController
        org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
        
            contextConfigLocation
            /WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml
        
        1
    

    
        SpringController
        *.htm