Spring application beans being duplicated - spring

Question

I am developing a spring application using version 3.1.2 using tomcat 7 as the servlet manager. I have noticed that the beans are being created twice, and I'm not sure how to prevent that. I understand that the issue is somewhere in my web.xml or application context, but I've been unable to locate the source of the duplication.
From the tomcat logs on startup, I see the following (paraphrasing for space):
May 24, 2013 9:33:03 AM org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader initWebApplicationContext
INFO: Root WebApplicationContext: initialization started
May 24, 2013 9:33:03 AM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext prepareRefresh
INFO: Refreshing Root WebApplicationContext: startup date [Fri May 24 09:33:03 CDT 2013]; root of context hierarchy
May 24, 2013 9:33:03 AM org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader loadBeanDefinitions
INFO: Loading XML bean definitions from ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/kpi-reporter-servlet.xml]
May 24, 2013 9:33:03 AM org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory preInstantiateSingletons
INFO: Pre-instantiating singletons in org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory#df9978: defining beans [...]; root of factory hierarchy
May 24, 2013 9:33:04 AM org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader initWebApplicationContext
INFO: Root WebApplicationContext: initialization completed in 1260 ms
May 24, 2013 9:33:04 AM org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet initServletBean
INFO: FrameworkServlet 'kpi-reporter': initialization started
May 24, 2013 9:33:04 AM org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext prepareRefresh
INFO: Refreshing WebApplicationContext for namespace 'kpi-reporter-servlet': startup date [Fri May 24 09:33:04 CDT 2013]; parent: Root WebApplicationContext
May 24, 2013 9:33:04 AM org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader loadBeanDefinitions
INFO: Loading XML bean definitions from ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/kpi-reporter-servlet.xml]
May 24, 2013 9:33:04 AM org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory preInstantiateSingletons
INFO: Pre-instantiating singletons in org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory#2821db: defining beans [...]; parent: org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory#df9978
Here is my web.xml and the application context configurations:
web.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
version="3.0">
<display-name>kpi-reporter</display-name>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>kpi-reporter</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>kpi-reporter</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>*.css</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>*.gif</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>*.js</url-pattern>
<url-pattern>*.png</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/kpi-reporter-servlet.xml</param-value>
</context-param>
<listener>
<listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>
</web-app>
kpi-reporter-servlet.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">
<context:component-scan base-package="."/>
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"></property>
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/"></property>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"></property>
</bean>
</beans>
If I remove the statement in the kpi-reporter-servlet.xml, then the beans don't get defined at all. If I move the context statement to the web.xml (along with the required imports) it still gets defined twice. I am suspecting that somehow the web.xml is being called twice during startup.
I've checked the webapps directory, and I only have one file and directory present, the .war file used to deploy the application, and the directory it was unpacked into.
Other .war applications I've developed also have this behavior, though they have similar xml files associated with them.
Does anyone know why this may be happening? I'm stumped over here.
Thanks in advance,
Max

Answer 1

You can comment out the context-param section, something like this:
<!--context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/kpi-reporter-servlet.xml</param-value>
</context-param-->
Or, rename kpi-reporter-servlet.xml to something else, and update context-param's param-value accordingly.
Spring's doc says:
Upon initialization of a DispatcherServlet, Spring MVC looks for a
file named [servlet-name]- servlet.xml...
So in your case, it's like kpi-reporter-servlet.xml is declared twice.

Answer 2

Sring initialize two application contexts here :
The ContextLoaderListener create an application context with the beans contained in the file referenced by your context-param tag :
<context-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/kpi-reporter-servlet.xml</param-value>
</context-param>
This is the "root" (or parent) application context.
Then your DispatcherServlet is looking for a file named SERVLET-NAME-servlet.xml and build another application context with the beans defined in the file. This application context will have the "root" application context as parent. Here your servlet's name is "kpi-reporter" so it loads all beans defined in "kpi-reporter-servlet.xml".
So, if you don't need to use a ContextLoaderListener then remove it. If you need it change the name of the file (for example : kpi-reporter-context.xml) and provide an empty kpi-reporter-servlet.xml which will be loaded by the DispatcherServlet.