No WebApplicationContext found: no ContextLoaderListener registered? and then 404 error

Question

I found that the error was due to the addition of the following lines in my jsp

<form:form></form:form>

I checked these two posts relevant to my error.

No WebApplicationContext found: no ContextLoaderListener registered?

spring security No WebApplicationContext found

In both of the posts they have mentioned to add this code

<listener>
   <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>  

After adding this code in my web.xml like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="2.5">
  <display-name>SpringSort</display-name>
  <welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>index.html</welcome-file>
    <welcome-file>index.htm</welcome-file>
    <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
    <welcome-file>default.html</welcome-file>
    <welcome-file>default.htm</welcome-file>
    <welcome-file>default.jsp</welcome-file>

  </welcome-file-list>

  <servlet>
        <servlet-name>sort</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>sort</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>*.html</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>
</web-app>

I am getting HTTP Status 404 - error and my project is not available(that is what the server says).

The relevant jars I have in my build path are: 1.springwebmvc3.0.3.jar, 2.spring2.5.6.jar, and I have the spring-form.tld file also.

How to solve this error?
Should I add some more jar files?
I am using STS 2.9.2 release for development purpose. Below is the start up log from the console.

SEVERE: Exception sending context initialized event to listener instance of class org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: IOException parsing XML document from ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]; nested exception is java.io.FileNotFoundException: Could not open ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:349)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:310)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.java:143)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.java:178)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(AbstractBeanDefinitionReader.java:149)
    at org.springframework.web.context.support.XmlWebApplicationContext.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlWebApplicationContext.java:124)
    at org.springframework.web.context.support.XmlWebApplicationContext.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlWebApplicationContext.java:92)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.refreshBeanFactory(AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext.java:123)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.obtainFreshBeanFactory(AbstractApplicationContext.java:422)
    at org.springframework.context.support.AbstractApplicationContext.refresh(AbstractApplicationContext.java:352)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.createWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:255)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.initWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:199)
    at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener.contextInitialized(ContextLoaderListener.java:45)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:3843)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4350)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1045)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.start(StandardHost.java:719)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1045)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.start(StandardEngine.java:443)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.start(StandardService.java:516)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.start(StandardServer.java:710)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:578)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:288)
    at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:413)
Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: Could not open ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]
    at org.springframework.web.context.support.ServletContextResource.getInputStream(ServletContextResource.java:117)
    at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:336)
    ... 27 more

Thanks in Advance

Solution 1

The 404 error was due to the fact that I was missing context-param tag.
So I added this code to my web.xml

<context-param> 
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name> 
<param-value>classpath*:META-INF/spring/applicationContext*.xml</param-value> 
</context-param>

After adding it I got the following error:

javax.servlet.ServletException: Servlet.init() for servlet sort threw exception
    org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:102)
    org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:286)...

java.lang.NoSuchFieldError: APPLICATION_CONTEXT_ID_PREFIX
org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.createWebApplicationContext(FrameworkServlet.java:430)
org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.createWebApplicationContext(FrameworkServlet.java:458)...

Getting this error I found that I was mixing a jar file in my lib folder. From some input I found that the culprit jar was spring2.5.6.jar.
So, I deleted the spring2.5.6.jar.

The above steps did the trick... Thanks to all the inputs.

Solution 2

Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: Could not open ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]

There's you problem ... you have not got a correctly named, and located applicationContext.xml. Where are you saving the applicationContext.xml, have you named it correctly ?