Document root element "beans", must match DOCTYPE root "null".

Issue/Exception :

A common error while working with Spring is the the Exception,

Document root element "beans", must match DOCTYPE root "null".

Though everything on the spring-config.xml file looks right we get the error. The exception stack trace is

Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.access.BootstrapException: Unable to initialize group definition. Group resource name [classpath*:cfa-spring-context.xml], factory key [cfaBeanFactory]; nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: Line 16 in XML document from URL [file:/C:/.../cfa-spring-context.xml] is invalid; nested exception is org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Document root element "beans", must match DOCTYPE root "null".
at org.springframework.beans.factory.access.SingletonBeanFactoryLocator.useBeanFactory(SingletonBeanFactoryLocator.java:389)
... 56 more
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanDefinitionStoreException: Line 16 in XML document from URL [file:/C:/.../cfa-spring-context.xml] is invalid; nested exception is org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Document root element "beans", must match DOCTYPE root "null".
at org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionReader.loadBeanDefinitions(XmlBeanDefinitionReader.java:169)
... 59 more
Caused by: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Document root element "beans", must match DOCTYPE root "null".
at org.apache.xerces.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.createSAXParseException(Unknown Source)
at org.apache.xerces.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.error(Unknown Source)

Solution :

This happens usually when we use an older version of Spring in the classspath. I replaced the older spring version of 2.5.0 with the latest version of 2.5.5 which solved the issue.


Solution Source

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/266601/spring-configuration-error