The DispatcherServlet
Figure 1. The request processing workflow in Spring Web MVC (high level)
The DispatcherServlet is an actual Servlet (it inherits from the HttpServlet base
class), and as such is declared in your web application. You need to map requests that
you want the DispatcherServlet to handle, by using a URL mapping. Here is a standard
Java EE Servlet configuration in a Servlet 3.0+ environment:
public class MyWebApplicationInitializer implements WebApplicationInitializer {
@Override
public void onStartup(ServletContext container) {
ServletRegistration.Dynamic registration = container.addServlet("example", new DispatcherServlet());
registration.setLoadOnStartup(1);
registration.addMapping("/example/*");
}
}In the preceding example, all requests starting with /example will be handled by the
DispatcherServlet instance named example.
Below is the web.xml equivalent of the above code based example:
<web-app>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>example</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>example</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/example/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>ApplicationContext instances in Spring can be scoped. In the Web MVC framework, each DispatcherServlet has its own WebApplicationContext, which inherits all the beans already defined in the root WebApplicationContext. The root WebApplicationContext should contain all the infrastructure beans that should be shared between your other contexts and Servlet instances. These inherited beans can be overridden in the servlet-specific scope, and you can define new scope-specific beans local to a given Servlet instance.
Figure 2. Typical context hierarchy in Spring Web MVC
Upon initialization of a DispatcherServlet, Spring MVC looks for a file named [servlet-name]-servlet.xml in the WEB-INF directory of your web application and creates the beans defined there, overriding the definitions of any beans defined with the same name in the global scope.
Consider the following DispatcherServlet Servlet configuration (in the web.xml file):
<web-app>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>golfing</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>golfing</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/golfing/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>With the above Servlet configuration in place, you will need to have a file called /WEB-INF/golfing-servlet.xml in your application; this file will contain all of your Spring Web MVC-specific components (beans). You can change the exact location of this configuration file through a Servlet initialization parameter (see below for details).
It is also possible to have just one root context for single DispatcherServlet scenarios.
Figure 3. Single root context in Spring Web MVC
This can be configured by setting an empty contextConfigLocation servlet init parameter, as shown below:
<web-app>
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/root-context.xml</param-value>
</context-param>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value></param-value>
</init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<listener>
<listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>
</web-app>DispatcherServlet initialization parameters
| Parameter | Explanation |
|---|---|
|
Class that implements |
|
String that is passed to the context instance (specified by |
|
Namespace of the |