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The first thing that we do when we want to implement Spring MVC in our project is to add DispatcherServlets entry in deployment descriptor (web.xml). Also we write a spring web configuration xxxx-servlet.xml which contains all the MVC mappings and data.

By default the name of file must be XXX-servlet.xml where XXX is the name of servlet. For example in below entry in Web.xml we defined servlet named “spring”.

<servlet>
   <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
   <servlet-class>
      org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
   </servlet-class>
   <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>*.html</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Note that the servlet name is “spring” and thus, Spring will by default load file named “spring-servlet.xml” from your webapps WEB-INF folder.

What if we want to load a file called “bean.xml” instead of default “XXX-servlet.xml” ?

Well, this can be achieved by passing one init-parameter to spring’s DispatcherServlet. Check the following web.xml snippet.

<servlet>
   <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
   <servlet-class>
      org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
   </servlet-class>
   <init-param>
      <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
      <param-value>/WEB-INF/bean.xml</param-value>
   </init-param>
   <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>*.html</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Note that in above code snippet, we have passed an init-param to DispatcherServlet called contextConfigLocation. Using this parameter not only can we change the name of Spring’s web context file but also change its location.

This parameter will call setContextConfigLocation method on DispatcherServlet and overrides default context config file. Note that it is possible to add multiple locations separated by any number of commas and spaced.

<servlet>
   <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
   <servlet-class>
      org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
   </servlet-class>
   <init-param>
      <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
      <param-value>/WEB-INF/bean.xml, /WEB-INF/bean-service.xml, /WEB-INF/bean-dao.xml</param-value>
   </init-param>
   <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>*.html</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

I hope this is useful :)