AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext subclass that implements the ConfigurableWebApplicationContext interface for web environments. Pre-implements a "configLocation" property, to be populated through the ConfigurableWebApplicationContext interface on web application startup.

This class is as easy to subclass as AbstractRefreshableApplicationContext: All you need to implements is the loadBeanDefinitions method; see the superclass javadoc for details. Note that implementations are supposed to load bean definitions from the files specified by the locations returned by the getConfigLocations method.

Interprets resource paths as servlet context resources, i.e. as paths beneath the web application root. Absolute paths, e.g. for files outside the web app root, can be accessed via "file:" URLs, as implemented by AbstractApplicationContext.

In addition to the special beans detected by AbstractApplicationContext, this class detects a ThemeSource bean in the context, with the name "themeSource".

This is the web context to be subclassed for a different bean definition format. Such a context implementation can be specified as "contextClass" context-param for ContextLoader or "contextClass" init-param for FrameworkServlet, replacing the default XmlWebApplicationContext. It would automatically receive the "contextConfigLocation" context-param or init-param, respectively.

Note that WebApplicationContext implementations are generally supposed to configure themselves based on the configuration received through the ConfigurableWebApplicationContext interface. In contrast, a standalone application context might allow for configuration in custom startup code (for example, GenericApplicationContext).