The ResourceLoaderAware interface is a special marker interface, identifying objects that expect to be provided with a ResourceLoader reference.

public interface ResourceLoaderAware {

   void setResourceLoader(ResourceLoader resourceLoader);
}

When a class implements ResourceLoaderAware and is deployed into an application context (as a Spring-managed bean), it is recognized as ResourceLoaderAware by the application context. The application context will then invoke the setResourceLoader(ResourceLoader), supplying itself as the argument (remember, all application contexts in Spring implement the ResourceLoader interface).

Of course, since an ApplicationContext is a ResourceLoader, the bean could also implement the ApplicationContextAware interface and use the supplied application context directly to load resources, but in general, it's better to use the specialized ResourceLoader interface if that's all that's needed. The code would just be coupled to the resource loading interface, which can be considered a utility interface, and not the whole Spring ApplicationContext interface.

As of Spring 2.5, you can rely upon autowiring of the ResourceLoader as an alternative to implementing the ResourceLoaderAware interface. The "traditional" constructor and byType autowiring modes (as described in Section 3.4.5, “Autowiring collaborators”) are now capable of providing a dependency of type ResourceLoader for either a constructor argument or setter method parameter respectively. For more flexibility (including the ability to autowire fields and multiple parameter methods), consider using the new annotation-based autowiring features. In that case, the ResourceLoader will be autowired into a field, constructor argument, or method parameter that is expecting the ResourceLoader type as long as the field, constructor, or method in question carries the @Autowired annotation. For more information, see Section 3.9.2, “@Autowired and @Inject”.