Question

however tomcat is throwing the error :

 IOException parsing XML document from ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml];

Which suggests that tomcat expects the applicationContext.xml to be one directory above where it is copied to. It is being copied to the /WEB-INF/classes directory, not just the plain old /WEB-INF

I am using maven.

Answer 1

In your web.xml you can state where your applicationContext.xml is located. If it is in /WEB-INF/classes then you must state /WEB-INF/classes/applicationContext.xml (and not just /WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml).

Try this:

<context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>
        /WEB-INF/classes/applicationContext.xml
    </param-value>
</context-param>
<listener>
    <listener-class>
        org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
    </listener-class>
</listener> 

To include more than one context files you can use the import function. To do so, write into your applicationContext.xml one line per file like this:

<import resource="myOtherSpringContext.xml"/>