Difference Between DispatcherServlet and ContextLoaderListener in Spring

Spring Object Oriented Programming Programming

ContextLoaderListener creates a root web-application-context for the web-application and puts it in the ServletContext. This context can be used to load and unload the spring-managed beans ir-respective of what technology is being used in the controller layer(Struts or Spring MVC).

DispatcherServlet creates its own WebApplicationContext and the handlers/controllers/view-resolvers are managed by this context.

Sr. No.	Key	DispatcherServlet	ContextLoaderListener
1	Basic	The task of the DispatcherServlet is to send request to the specific Spring MVC controller	ContextLoaderListener reads the Spring configuration file (with value given against contextConfigLocation in web.xml ), parses it and loads the singleton bean defined in that config file. So we initialize the web application with ContextLoaderListener so that we read/parse/validate the config file in advance and whenever we can to inject dependency we can straightaway do it without any delay
2	Optional	It is optional. Spring application can’t live without the DispatcherServlet	It is mandatory. Spring application can live without the ContextLoaderListner
3	Container	DispatcherServlet creates its own WebApplicationContext. The handlers/controllers/view-resolvers are managed by this context	Application Context is the container initialized by a ContextLoaderListener defined in the web.xml
4	Beans	Web-specific beans such as controllers are included in DispatcherServlet’s Web Application Context	General beans such as services and DAOs make their way in root Web Application Context

Himanshu shriv

Updated on: 2020-09-09T09:06:17+05:30

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