title: Some information about Spring web.xml <context-param> and <listener> tag (referred to an Hello World example)
body: <p>I am quite new in the Spring MVC World. 
  Today I am studing the simple "Hello World" Example generated by STS doing: File ---> Spring Template Project ---> Spring MVC Project</p>
  
  <p>In the web.xml I have the declaration of the DispatcherServlet and the request mapping handled by it...Up to here everything ok</p>
  
  <p>In the web.xml I have also this part of code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;!-- The definition of the Root Spring Container shared by all Servlets and Filters --&gt;
  &lt;context-param&gt;
      &lt;param-name&gt;contextConfigLocation&lt;/param-name&gt;
      &lt;param-value&gt;/WEB-INF/spring/root-context.xml&lt;/param-value&gt;
  &lt;/context-param&gt;
  
  &lt;!-- Creates the Spring Container shared by all Servlets and Filters --&gt;
  &lt;listener&gt;
      &lt;listener-class&gt;org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener&lt;/listener-class&gt;
  &lt;/listener&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Reading the Spring documentation about ContextLoaderListener I read that this class execute the bootstrap of the listener to start up Spring's root WebApplicationContext but...what it means exactly?</p>
  
  <p>An other doubt is about the contextConfigLocation parameter that I am passing to my context...what is exactly? Opening the /WEB-INF/spring/root-context.xml file it seems that it do not contain any configuration...is it a void configuration file created automatically by my template project creation process? what kind of configuration should contain in a Spring project?</p>
  
  <p>I think tath the  and the  tags are not used in this Hello World project because if I delete these tag the projext still run well....is it right?</p>