Context Configuration with XML resources

To load an ApplicationContext for your tests by using XML configuration files, annotate your test class with @ContextConfiguration and configure the locations attribute with an array that contains the resource locations of XML configuration metadata. A plain or relative path (for example, context.xml) is treated as a classpath resource that is relative to the package in which the test class is defined. A path starting with a slash is treated as an absolute classpath location (for example, /org/example/config.xml). A path that represents a resource URL (i.e., a path prefixed with classpath:, file:, http:, etc.) is used as is.

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from "/app-config.xml" and
// "/test-config.xml" in the root of the classpath
@ContextConfiguration(locations = {"/app-config.xml", "/test-config.xml"}) (1)
class MyTest {
	// class body...
}
1 Setting the locations attribute to a list of XML files. 
@ExtendWith(SpringExtension::class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from "/app-config.xml" and
// "/test-config.xml" in the root of the classpath
@ContextConfiguration(locations = ["/app-config.xml", "/test-config.xml"]) (1)
class MyTest {
	// class body...
}
1 Setting the locations attribute to a list of XML files.

@ContextConfiguration supports an alias for the locations attribute through the standard Java value attribute. Thus, if you do not need to declare additional attributes in @ContextConfiguration, you can omit the declaration of the locations attribute name and declare the resource locations by using the shorthand format demonstrated in the following example:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
@ContextConfiguration({"/app-config.xml", "/test-config.xml"}) (1)
class MyTest {
	// class body...
}
1 Specifying XML files without using the locations attribute. 
@ExtendWith(SpringExtension::class)
@ContextConfiguration("/app-config.xml", "/test-config.xml") (1)
class MyTest {
	// class body...
}
1 Specifying XML files without using the locations attribute.

If you omit both the locations and the value attributes from the @ContextConfiguration annotation, the TestContext framework tries to detect a default XML resource location. Specifically, GenericXmlContextLoader and GenericXmlWebContextLoader detect a default location based on the name of the test class. If your class is named com.example.MyTest, GenericXmlContextLoader loads your application context from "classpath:com/example/MyTest-context.xml". The following example shows how to do so:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from
// "classpath:com/example/MyTest-context.xml"
@ContextConfiguration (1)
class MyTest {
	// class body...
}
1 Loading configuration from the default location. 
@ExtendWith(SpringExtension::class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from
// "classpath:com/example/MyTest-context.xml"
@ContextConfiguration (1)
class MyTest {
	// class body...
}
1 Loading configuration from the default location.