In case I want to read bean definitions from spring-application-context.xml, I would do this in web.xml file. <context-param> <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name> <param-value> /WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml </param-value> </context-param> <listener> <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class> </listener> In case I want to read bean definitions through Java Configuration Class (AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext), I would do this in web.xml <servlet> <servlet-name>appServlet</servlet-name> <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class> <init-param> <param-name>contextClass</param-name> <param-value> org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext </param-value> </init-param> <init-param> <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name> <param-value> org.package.MyConfigAnnotatedClass </param-value> </init-param> </servlet> How do I use both in my application. like reading beans from both configuration xml file and annotated class. Is there a way to load spring beans in xml file while we are using AppConfigAnnotatedClass to instantiate/use rest of the beans.