Question

I’m trying to improve my spring mvc configuration so as to not require a new config file for every servlet I add, but I’m running into problems. I’ve tried using this tutorial as a starting point, but I’m running into an issue that I can’t figure out.

The problem is that when I do a GET to my servlet, I get back a 404 error. Here’s my config and a representative java snippet from a Controller:

web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.5" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">
    <display-name>SightLogix Coordination System</display-name>

    <description>SightLogix Coordination System</description>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>Spring MVC Dispatcher Servlet</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>     
            <init-param>
                <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
                <param-value>
                    /WEB-INF/application-context.xml
                    /WEB-INF/application-security.xml
                </param-value>
            </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>Spring MVC Dispatcher Servlet</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/slcs/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>
            /WEB-INF/application-context.xml
            /WEB-INF/application-security.xml
        </param-value>
    </context-param>

    <listener>
        <listener-class>
                org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
        </listener-class>
    </listener>

    <filter>
        <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
        <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.DelegatingFilterProxy</filter-class>
    </filter>

    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>springSecurityFilterChain</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>
</web-app>

application-context.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd"

    default-init-method="init" default-destroy-method="destroy">

    <mvc:annotation-driven />

    <context:component-scan base-package="top.level" />
</beans>

application-security.xml:

<beans:beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/security"
    xmlns:beans="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-3.0.xsd
                    http://www.springframework.org/schema/security http://www.springframework.org/schema/security/spring-security-3.0.xsd">

    <http>
        <intercept-url pattern="/**" access="ROLE_MANAGER" requires-channel="https" />
        <http-basic />
    </http>

    <authentication-manager>
        <authentication-provider user-service-ref="myUserDetailsService">
            <password-encoder hash="sha"/>
        </authentication-provider>
    </authentication-manager>

    <beans:bean id="myUserDetailsService"
        class="path.to.my.UserDetailsServiceImpl">
    </beans:bean>

</beans:beans>

Snippet of a Controller class (one of many, but they all look essentially like this):

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/foo.xml")
public class FooController
{       
    @RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.GET)
    public void handleGET(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException
    {
        ...

Can anyone tell me what I’m doing incorrectly?
Thanks!

Answer 1

The only thing out of place here is that you’ve used the same context config files for both the root webapp context and your servlet context. This is almost guaranteed to be a bad idea, and will result in a lot of weird behaviour. This may well be the cause of your problem.

The ContextLoaderListener is configured with the contextConfigLocation <context-param>, and creates and manages the root WebApplicationContext.

The ServletDispatcherServlet is configured with the contextConfigLocation <init-param>, and creates and manages the servlet WebApplicationContext.

The root WebApplicationContext is the parent of the servlet appcontext, i.e any beans in the root WebApplicationContext are visible to those beans in the servlet WebApplicationContext.

Your first step should be to separate those configurations. With the correct beans in the correct places (e.g. all MVC stuff has to go in the servlet context). Do not share bean definitions between the two, it’ll just get confusing and/or broken.