[spring] What is the difference between ApplicationContext and WebApplicationContext in Spring MVC?

What is the difference between Application Context and Web Application Context?

I am aware that WebApplicationContext is used for Spring MVC architecture oriented applications?

I want to know what is the use of ApplicationContext in MVC applications? And what kind of beans are defined in ApplicationContext?

Web application context, specified by the WebApplicationContext interface, is a Spring application context for a web applications. It has all the properties of a regular Spring application context, given that the WebApplicationContext interface extends the ApplicationContext interface, and add a method for retrieving the standard Servlet API ServletContext for the web application.

In addition to the standard Spring bean scopes singleton and prototype, there are three additional scopes available in a web application context:

• request - scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of a single HTTP request; that is, each HTTP request has its own instance of a bean created off the back of a single bean definition
• session - scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of an HTTP Session
• application - scopes a single bean definition to the lifecycle of a ServletContext

Going back to Servlet days, web.xml can have only one <context-param>, so only one context object gets created when server loads an application and the data in that context is shared among all resources (Ex: Servlets and JSPs). It is same as having Database driver name in the context, which will not change. In similar way, when we declare contextConfigLocation param in <contex-param> Spring creates one Application Context object.

 <context-param>
      <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
      <param-value>com.myApp.ApplicationContext</param-value>
 </context-param>

You can have multiple Servlets in an application. For example you might want to handle /secure/* requests in one way and /non-seucre/* in other way. For each of these Servlets you can have a context object, which is a WebApplicationContext.

<servlet>
    <servlet-name>SecureSpringDispatcher</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>contextClass</param-name>
        <param-value>com.myapp.secure.SecureContext</param-value>
    </init-param>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>SecureSpringDispatcher</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/secure/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet>
    <servlet-name>NonSecureSpringDispatcher</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>contextClass</param-name>
        <param-value>com.myapp.non-secure.NonSecureContext</param-value>
    </init-param>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>NonSecureSpringDispatcher</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/non-secure/*</url-patten>
</servlet-mapping>

ApplicationContext (Root Application Context) : Every Spring MVC web application has an applicationContext.xml file which is configured as the root of context configuration. Spring loads this file and creates an applicationContext for the entire application. This file is loaded by the ContextLoaderListener which is configured as a context param in web.xml file. And there will be only one applicationContext per web application.

WebApplicationContext : WebApplicationContext is a web aware application context i.e. it has servlet context information. A single web application can have multiple WebApplicationContext and each Dispatcher servlet (which is the front controller of Spring MVC architecture) is associated with a WebApplicationContext. The webApplicationContext configuration file *-servlet.xml is specific to a DispatcherServlet. And since a web application can have more than one dispatcher servlet configured to serve multiple requests, there can be more than one webApplicationContext file per web application.

The accepted answer is through but there is official explanation on this:

The WebApplicationContext is an extension of the plain ApplicationContext that has some extra features necessary for web applications. It differs from a normal ApplicationContext in that it is capable of resolving themes (see Using themes), and that it knows which Servlet it is associated with (by having a link to the ServletContext). The WebApplicationContext is bound in the ServletContext, and by using static methods on the RequestContextUtils class you can always look up the WebApplicationContext if you need access to it.

Cited from Spring web framework reference

By the way servlet and root context are both webApplicationContext: