Failed to load Spring ApplicationContext

Question

I'm writing unit tests for a spring application which is sort of complex. I want to load spring context in order to use defined beans. My context.xml is located at:

src/main/resources/context.xml

After maven build, the context.xml appears at:

target/classes/context.xml

In the pom.xml, I have: (As suggested by this post)

<resources>
    <resource>
        <filtering>true</filtering>
        <directory>src/test/resources</directory>
        <includes>
            <include>**/*.properties</include>
        </includes>
        <excludes>
            <exclude>**/*local.properties</exclude>
        </excludes>
    </resource>
    <resource>
        <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
        <includes>
            <include>**/*.properties</include>
            <include>**/*.xml</include>
        </includes>
    </resource>
</resources>

I have tried to do this job in two ways:

1, Use ApplicationContext
AppliactionContext springContext = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("/context.xml");
MyObject myObject = springContext.getBean(myObject.class);

2, Use Annotations
@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations={"/context.xml"})
public class myTest{
    @Autowired
    MyObject myObject;
    ...
}

But neither way works for me. Error message:

java.lang.IllegalStateException: Failed to load ApplicationContext
at org.springframework.test.context.TestContext.getApplicationContext(TestContext.java:157)
at org.springframework.test.context.support.DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.injectDependencies(DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.java:109)
at org.springframework.test.context.support.DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.prepareTestInstance(DependencyInjectionTestExecutionListener.java:75)
at org.springframework.test.context.TestContextManager.prepareTestInstance(TestContextManager.java:321)
at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.createTest(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:211)
at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner$1.runReflectiveCall(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:288)
at org.junit.internal.runners.model.ReflectiveCallable.run(ReflectiveCallable.java:15)
at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.methodBlock(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:290)
at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.java:231)
at org.junit.runners.BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.runChild(BlockJUnit4ClassRunner.java:50)
at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$3.run(ParentRunner.java:193)
at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$1.schedule(ParentRunner.java:52)
at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.runChildren(ParentRunner.java:191)
at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner.access$000(ParentRunner.java:42)
at org.junit.runners.ParentRunner$2.evaluate(ParentRunner.java:184)
at org.springframework.test.context.junit4.statements.RunBeforeTestClassCallbacks.evaluate(RunBeforeTestClassCallbacks.java:61) 
...  more

Important point: The context.xml was actually copied from another project. These projects run together as an application but when function as Junit, I don't know how to load the context from a different project so I simply copied and pasted the file. This might be a problem

More information Failure Trace:

Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean
with name 'validator' defined in class path resource [context.xml]: BeanPostProcessor
before instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is    
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect

Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect

Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.aspectj.lang.annotation.Aspect

So looks like I have to import some spring aop package first?

Please give suggestions. Much appreciation.

Answer 1

When running as junit test using Spring Test annotations, you need to use classpath in the locations like this

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = "classpath:/context.xml")

And I don't use any resources definition in the pom.xml. You can remove that and try like this.