How to get Spring WebContext in class annotated @controller

Question

In Spring MVC with annotation, we mark any POJO with @Controller. In this controller we can get WebApplicationContext, using autowired property.

@Controller
public class HomePageController {

@Autowired
ApplicationContext act;

    @RequestMapping("/*.html")
    public String handleBasic(){
        SimpleDomain sd = (SimpleDomain)act.getBean("sd1");
        System.out.println(sd.getFirstProp());
        return "hello";
}

But in this approach we do not have servletContext handy with us. So is there way we can still use older way of getting WebApplicationContext ? i.e.

WebApplicationContextUtils.getRequiredWebApplicationContext(servletContext)

How will we get servletContext here ?

I am not facing any compulsion to use old way; so this question is just out of curiosity to check flexibility of spring. Also It can be a interview question.

Answer 1

You can just inject it into your controller:

@Autowired private ServletContext servletContext;

Or take HttpServletRequest as a parameter and get it from there:

@RequestMapping(...)
public ModelAndView myMethod(HttpServletRequest request ...){
    ServletContext servletContext = request.getServletContext()
}