Question

I would like to set to be able to set a string variable such as “DEVEL” or “PRODUCTION”, in Glassfishv3 and Apache tomcat 6 servers, and want it to be accessible from java code so I can change behaviour of my app according to the variable. What is the easiest way of doing that?

Answer 1

For tomcat you can use CATALINA_OPTS environment variable in order to set system properties:

CATALINA_OPTS   (Optional) Java runtime options used when the "start",
                or "run" command is executed.

So you can setup this in IDE or just in command line:

CATALINA_OPTS=-DdevelopmentMode=true 

And then in your app:

System.getProperty("developmentMode")