26.8. Spring Application Context as a Seam Component

Although it is possible to use the Spring ContextLoaderListener to start your application's Spring ApplicationContext, there are some limitations: the Spring ApplicationContext must be started after the SeamListener, and starting a Spring ApplicationContext for use in Seam unit and integration tests can be complicated.

To overcome these limitations, the Spring integration includes a Seam component that can start a Spring ApplicationContext. To use this component, place the <spring:context-loader/> definition in the components.xml file. Specify your Spring context file location in the config-locations attribute. If more than one configuration file is required, you can place them in the nested <spring:config-locations/> element, as per standard components.xml multi-value practices.

<components xmlns="http://jboss.com/products/seam/components"
            xmlns:spring="http://jboss.com/products/seam/spring"
            xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
            xsi:schemaLocation=
              "http://jboss.com/products/seam/components
               http://jboss.com/products/seam/components-2.2.xsd
               http://jboss.com/products/seam/spring
               http://jboss.com/products/seam/spring-2.2.xsd">

  <spring:context-loader config-locations=
                           "/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml"/>

</components>