Question

I have a simple spring mvc app, using maven with intellij.

How do you go about creating seperate files for both production and development?

e.g. say I want to set a production and development mysql connection string for nhibernate?

How can I have it such that when I build it will take the correct file to use to grab configuration information? (and any advice on naming conventions for the files?)

Answer 1

Using an ant task is pretty straight forward for this.

First, create a couple profiles under <project> in your pom:

<profiles>
  <profile>
    <id>build-dev</id>
    <activation>
      <!-- <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault> -->
      <property>
        <name>env</name>
        <value>dev</value>
      </property>
    </activation>
    <properties>
      <config.name>config.dev.properties</config.name>
    </properties>
  </profile>
  <profile>
    <id>build-prod</id>
    <activation>
      <property>
        <name>env</name>
        <value>prod</value>
      </property>
    </activation>
    <properties>
      <config.name>config.prod.properties</config.name>
    </properties>
  </profile>
</profiles>

Then use the maven-antrun-plugin

<plugins>
  <plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <phase>prepare-package</phase>
        <goals>
          <goal>run</goal>
        </goals>
        <configuration>
          <tasks>
            <delete file="${project.build.outputDirectory}/config.properties"/>
            <copy file="src/main/resources/${config.name}" tofile="${project.build.outputDirectory}/config.properties"/>
            <delete file="${project.build.outputDirectory}/config.dev.properties"/>
            <delete file="${project.build.outputDirectory}/config.prod.properties"/>
          </tasks>
        </configuration>
      </execution>
    </executions>
  </plugin>
</plugins>

Now you just specify the profile you want when you run mvn. If you want a default, uncomment and place the:

<!-- <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault> -->

section in the profile you want by default. As it is, the build will fail on the ant task if neither is specified.