Spring Framework ContextLoaderListener

reference: spring in action 3rd edition

ContextLoaderListener is a servlet listener that loads additional configuration into a Spring application context 

 alongside the application context created by DispatcherServlet

web.xml

!-- Default Spring configuration file: /WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml
		To specify Spring configuration files for ContextLoaderListener to load, 
		set the contextConfigLocation parameter in the servlet context -->
	<context-param>
		<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
		<!-- Unless specified otherwise, the paths are relative to the application root -->
		<!-- classpath: to load xml as resources from the application classpath-->
		<param-value>
			/WEB-INF/spitter-security.xml
			classpath:service-context.xml
			classpath:persistence-context.xml
			classpath:dataSource-context.xml
		</param-value>
	</context-param>
	
	<!-- Creates the Spring Container shared by all Servlets and Filters -->
	<listener>
		<listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
	</listener>