Java Project: Failed to load ApplicationContext

I had the same problem, and I was using the following plugin for tests:

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.9</version>
    <configuration>
        <useFile>true</useFile>
        <includes>
            <include>**/*Tests.java</include>
            <include>**/*Test.java</include>
        </includes>
        <excludes>
            <exclude>**/Abstract*.java</exclude>
        </excludes>
        <junitArtifactName>junit:junit</junitArtifactName>
        <parallel>methods</parallel>
        <threadCount>10</threadCount>
    </configuration>
</plugin>

The test were running fine in the IDE (eclipse sts), but failed when using command mvn test.

After a lot of trial and error, I figured the solution was to remove parallel testing, the following two lines from the plugin configuration above:

    <parallel>methods</parallel>
    <threadCount>10</threadCount>

Hope that this helps someone out!

Looks like you are using maven (src/main/java). In this case put the applicationContext.xml file in the src/main/resources directory. It will be copied in the classpath directory and you should be able to access it with

@ContextConfiguration("/applicationContext.xml")

From the Spring-Documentation: A plain path, for example "context.xml", will be treated as a classpath resource from the same package in which the test class is defined. A path starting with a slash is treated as a fully qualified classpath location, for example "/org/example/config.xml".

So it's important that you add the slash when referencing the file in the root directory of the classpath.

If you work with the absolute file path you have to use 'file:C:...' (if I understand the documentation correctly).

I've faced this issue because during bootstrapping my spring project using the class that implements ApplicationListener<ContextRefreshedEvent> and inside onApplicationEvent function it throws an exception

so make sure that your application bootstrap points do not throw any exception

in my case, I was using maven surefire plugin for testing so to debug the test process use this command

mvn -Dmaven.surefire.debug test