This version is still in development and is not considered stable yet. For the latest stable version, please use Spring Framework 6.1.14!

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.