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I’m a newbie when it comes to properties, and I read that XML is the preferred way to store these. I noticed however, that writing a regular .properties file in the style of
foo=bar
fu=baz
also works. This would mean a lot less typing (and maybe easier to read and more efficient as well). So what are the benefits of using an XML file?
In XML you can store more complex (e.g. hierarchical) data than in a properties file. So it depends on your usecase. If you just want to store a small number of direct properties a properties file is easier to handle (though the Java properties class can read XML based properties, too).
It would make sense to keep your configuration interface as generic as possible anyway, so you have no problem to switch to another representation ( e.g. by using Apache Commons Configuration ) if you need to.