Spring Boot Externalizing properties not working

I don’t use this method to externalise properties. First, I’ll try a suggestion for your method and then I’ll show you what I’m using.

The suggestion for your method is to use file:/// instead of file:/ as with Spring I found that when not passing the three slashes after the colon it didn’t recognise the property.

I’ve created a sample project for you, available here with instructions.

Now for the method I use.

I define a Configuration file for each profile and I keep the application.properties file under src/main/resources.

Then I use the @Profile and @PropertySource annotations on each configuration file.

For example:

@Configuration
@Profile("dev")
@PropertySource("file:///${user.home}/.devopsbuddy/application-dev.properties")
public class DevelopmentConfig {

@Bean
public EmailService emailService() {
    return new MockEmailService();
}

@Bean
public ServletRegistrationBean h2ConsoleServletRegistration() {
    ServletRegistrationBean bean = new ServletRegistrationBean(new WebServlet());
    bean.addUrlMappings("/console/*");
    return bean;
}
}

And

@Configuration
@Profile("prod")
@PropertySource("file:///${user.home}/.devopsbuddy/application-prod.properties")
public class ProductionConfig {

@Bean
public EmailService emailService() {
    return new SmtpEmailService();
}
}

I have also got a Configuration file that is valid for all profiles, which I call ApplicationConfig, as follows:

@Configuration
@EnableJpaRepositories(basePackages = "com.devopsbuddy.backend.persistence.repositories")
@EntityScan(basePackages = "com.devopsbuddy.backend.persistence.domain.backend")
@EnableTransactionManagement
@PropertySource("file:///${user.home}/.devopsbuddy/application-common.properties")
public class ApplicationConfig {
}

My src/main/resources/application.properties file looks like the following:

spring.profiles.active=dev
[email protected]
token.expiration.length.minutes=120

Of course I could externalise the spring.profile.active property by passing it as a system property but for my case and for now it’s fine.

When running the application, if I pass the “dev” profile, Spring will load all properties and Beans defined in the DevelopmentConfig class plus all those in ApplicationConfig. If I pass “prod”, the ProductionConfig and ApplicationConfig properties will be loaded instead.

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