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

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 exists in the WEB-INF folder.

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

Solution 1:

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).

Solution 2:

If you use maven, create a directory called resources in the main directory, and then copy your applicationContext.xml into it.

From your java code call:

ApplicationContext appCtx = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("applicationContext.xml");

Solution 3:

I got the same error. I solved it moving the file applicationContext.xmlin a

sub-folder of the srcfolder. e.g:

context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("/com/ejemplo/dao/applicationContext.xml");