How to use property-placeholder for file on filesystem

Question

We used to have a way to load properties from a file on the classpath:

Answer 1

This did work for me:

<context:property-placeholder location="file:/path/to/myConfigFile.properties" />

But this (interestingly) did not:

<context:property-placeholder location="#{ systemProperties['foo'] }" />

I got

java.io.FileNotFoundException: Could not open ServletContext resource [/#{ systemProperties['foo'] }]

You're not going to be able to use a property placeholder ${..} with the definition of a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer. It's the chicken before the egg.

You can always subclass PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer and have it do whatever you want (for example, call setLocations() in a @PostConstruct method. Then, instead of using <context:property-placeholder>, use:

<bean class="com.foo.MyPropertyPlaceholderConfigurer"/>

Answer 2

What about this way?

<context:property-placeholder properties-ref="prop" />

<util:properties id="prop" location="reso"/>

<bean id="reso" class="org.springframework.core.io.FileSystemResource">
    <constructor-arg index="0" value="/yourpathandfile" />
</bean>