Why is my Spring ContextRefreshed event called twice?

Question

I have a Spring ApplicationListener bean registered to listen for ContextRefreshed events. For some odd reason though, I get two calls to the onApplicationEvent(ContextRefreshedEvent) method at the completion of the context initialization. Is this normal behavior or is it indicative of a problem with my configuration? I'm using Jetty 8 for my Servlet container.

My relevant web.xml configuration is as follows

<context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>/WEB-INF/config/spring/spring-config.xml</param-value>
</context-param>
<servlet>
    <servlet-name>Spring</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value></param-value>
    </init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<listener>
    <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>Spring</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/service/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Thanks!

score 28 · Accepted Answer · answered May 29 '11 at 02:10

28

Even though you did not specify a contextConfigLocation for your DispatcherServlet it still creates a child context and the second refreshed event is for that context. Use event.getApplicationContext() to find out which context the event is for.

answered May 29 '11 at 02:10

sourcedelica

23,940
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1

That was it! Using either the `id` or `displayName` property of the ApplicationContext I can now distinguish between the two events. – Andre May 29 '11 at 13:06
5

Or if you @Autowire the appContext (or implement ApplicationContextAware) you can compare that appContext versus the one in the event. – sourcedelica May 29 '11 at 23:32
@Andre A noob's question: How to access ID or displayName from ContextRefreshedEvent? – Piyush Joshi Nov 27 '15 at 14:39
Figured it out. By casting ContextRefreshedEvent.getSource() to ApplicationContext and then calling getDisplayName()/getId() on that. – Piyush Joshi Nov 27 '15 at 14:48

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

it happened to me as well, on a different event-listener. (ApplicationListener<AuthenticationFailureBadCredentialsEvent>)

I suspected the ContextLoaderListener, and when I removed the declaration from the web.xml, the app was working properly. Then I had to figure out what is its purpose, of the ContextLoaderListener...

Role/Purpose of ContextLoaderListener in Spring?

the interesting answer there is:

ContextLoaderListener is optional. Just to make a point here: you can boot up a Spring application without ever configuring ContextLoaderListener ...just the basic minimum web.xml with DispatcherServlet

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 28 '11 at 22:01

1

It looks like bug.

https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SPR-6589

If you are using 3.0 try it on the latest available release which is 3.05.

answered May 28 '11 at 22:01

danny.lesnik

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Ok, we're using 3.0.4 so I'll give 3.0.5 a shot and report back my findings. – Andre May 29 '11 at 00:18
Bah, upgraded to 3.0.5 and it's still an issue. – Andre May 29 '11 at 00:58
Even 3.1 has the same issue. – Deckard May 31 '13 at 09:12

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 16 '12 at 18:18

I had this problem too but fixed it. I was injecting the dataSource into my DAO (and instantiating a JdbcTemplate with it)....but I also had a Spring bean configured for JDBCTemplate.

I should have been injecting my DAO with the jdbcTemplate...that avoids the duplicate.

Why is my Spring ContextRefreshed event called twice?

4 Answers4

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