Groovy on Grails - Could not open ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]

By Jennifer on May 14, 2009 10:00 PM
This issue has gotten me more than once. I've just checked a Grails project out of SVN and I fire it up. It complains that it 'Could not open ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]'. What the heck does that mean? I didn't do any xml hacking. Grails is supposed to take care of this, right? Well, kind of. If you followed the '[how to check grails into svn](http://www.grails.org/Checking+Projects+into+SVN)' document, you did not check in the WEB-INF folder. This is your problem. To fix this issue, just run this command and respond 'yes' to any prompts: 
grails upgrade
Just to validate that you're experiencing the same issue, here's exactly what I see when I run into this problem: 
$  grails run-app
Welcome to Grails 1.1 - http://grails.org/
Licensed under Apache Standard License 2.0
Grails home is set to: /local/dev/grails-1.1

Base Directory: /local/grails_app/trunk
Running Grails application..
2009-04-29 13:21:03,085 [main] ERROR context.ContextLoader  - Context initialization failed
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 grails.web.container.EmbeddableServer$start.call(Unknown Source)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure5_closure11.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy:145)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure5_closure11.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy)
	at _GrailsSettings_groovy$_run_closure10.doCall(_GrailsSettings_groovy:269)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure5.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy:137)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy.runInline(_GrailsRun_groovy:104)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy.this$4$runInline(_GrailsRun_groovy)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure1.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy:58)
	at RunApp$_run_closure1.doCall(RunApp.groovy:33)
	at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure4.doCall(Gant.groovy:324)
	at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure6.doCall(Gant.groovy:334)
	at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure6.doCall(Gant.groovy)
	at gant.Gant.withBuildListeners(Gant.groovy:344)
	at gant.Gant.this$2$withBuildListeners(Gant.groovy)
	at gant.Gant$this$2$withBuildListeners.callCurrent(Unknown Source)
	at gant.Gant.dispatch(Gant.groovy:334)
	at gant.Gant.this$2$dispatch(Gant.groovy)
	at gant.Gant.invokeMethod(Gant.groovy)
	at gant.Gant.processTargets(Gant.groovy:495)
	at gant.Gant.processTargets(Gant.groovy:480)
Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: Could not open ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]
	... 20 more
2009-04-29 13:21:03,086 [main] ERROR mortbay.log  - Failed startup of context org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext@61c8cd04{/grails_app,/local/svncopy/grails_app/trunk/web-app}
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 grails.web.container.EmbeddableServer$start.call(Unknown Source)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure5_closure11.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy:145)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure5_closure11.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy)
	at _GrailsSettings_groovy$_run_closure10.doCall(_GrailsSettings_groovy:269)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure5.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy:137)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy.runInline(_GrailsRun_groovy:104)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy.this$4$runInline(_GrailsRun_groovy)
	at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure1.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy:58)
	at RunApp$_run_closure1.doCall(RunApp.groovy:33)
	at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure4.doCall(Gant.groovy:324)
	at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure6.doCall(Gant.groovy:334)
	at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure6.doCall(Gant.groovy)
	at gant.Gant.withBuildListeners(Gant.groovy:344)
	at gant.Gant.this$2$withBuildListeners(Gant.groovy)
	at gant.Gant$this$2$withBuildListeners.callCurrent(Unknown Source)
	at gant.Gant.dispatch(Gant.groovy:334)
	at gant.Gant.this$2$dispatch(Gant.groovy)
	at gant.Gant.invokeMethod(Gant.groovy)
	at gant.Gant.processTargets(Gant.groovy:495)
	at gant.Gant.processTargets(Gant.groovy:480)
Caused by: java.io.FileNotFoundException: Could not open ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]
	... 20 more
Server running. Browse to http://localhost:8080/grails_app

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