The ApplicationContext is a context object for storing of state information. It is scoped around the associated Smooks instance, that is, only one ApplicationContext instance exists per Smooks instance. This context object can be used to store data that needs to be maintained and accessible across multiple Smooks.filterSource executions. Components (including SAXVisitor components) can gain access to their associated ApplicationContext instance by declaring an ApplicationContext class property and annotating it with the @AppContext annotation. See the example below:

public class MySmooksComponent 
{
    @AppContext
    private ApplicationContext appContext;

    // etc...
}