Accessing multiple property files with @PropertyResource in Spring

Question

Using the new @PropertySource annotation in Spring 3.1, how can you access multiple property files with Environment?

Currently I have:

@         


        

Answer 1

Multiple Properties can be accessed in Spring by either,

• @PropertySource( {"name1", "name2"} )
• @PropertySorces( { @PropertySource("name1"), @PropertySource("name2") } )

Example of @PropertySource,

@PropertySource({
        "classpath:hibernateCustom.properties",
        "classpath:hikari.properties"
})

Example of @PropertySources,

@PropertySources({
        @PropertySource("classpath:hibernateCustom.properties"),
        @PropertySource("classpath:hikari.properties")
})

After you specify properties path you can access them through Environment instance as you usually did

NOTE: Only these simply did not work for me though

I was getting compilation error as I was using property values to configure my app context. I tried all that I found through web but they did not work for me !

Until I configured Spring context as below,

applicationContext.setServletContext(servletContext);
applicationContext.refresh();

Example

public class SpringWebAppInitializer implements WebApplicationInitializer{

    @Override
    public void onStartup(ServletContext servletContext) throws ServletException {
        // Create the 'root' Spring application context
        AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext applicationContext = new AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext();
        // register config class i.e. where i used @PropertySource
        applicationContext.register(AppContextConfig.class);
        // below 2 are added to make @PropertySources/ multi properties file to work
        applicationContext.setServletContext(servletContext);
        applicationContext.refresh();

        // other config
    }
}

For your information, I am using Spring 4.3

Answer 2

there are two different approaches: the first one is to use the PropertyPlaceHolder in your applicationContext.xml: beans-factory-placeholderconfigurer

<context:property-placeholder location="classpath*:META-INF/spring/properties/*.properties"/>

the namespace to add is xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"

If you want a direct access of a key to a String variable in your controller, use:

@Value("${some.key}")
private String valueOfThatKey;

The second approach is to use the util:properties in you applicationContext.xml:

<util:properties id="fileA" location="classpath:META-INF/properties/a.properties"/>
<util:properties id="fileB" location="classpath:META-INF/properties/b.properties"/>

using the namesapce xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util" schemaLocations: http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-3.0.xsd

Then in your Controller:

@Resource(name="fileA")
private Properties propertyA;

@Resource(name="fileB")
private Properties propertyB;

If you want a value from the files, just use the method getProperty(String key)

Answer 3

If you can migrate to Spring 4.x the problem has been solved with the new @PropertySources annotation:

@PropertySources({
        @PropertySource("/file1.properties"),
        @PropertySource("/file2.properties")
})