Question

I’m having some problems with maven 3 and getting to load the right .properties file.

What I want to achieve is the following: With mvn -Plocal i want to load the setting-local.properties, and if its run with prod i want to load the settings-prod.properties.

It works by using mvn -Denv=local, but when I try with the -Plocal the variable are not loaded (settings-${env}.properties does not exist).

My pom.xml:

<profiles>
    <profile>
        <id>local</id>
        <activation>
            <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault>
        </activation>
        <properties>
            <env>local</env>
        </properties>
    </profile>
</profiles>

In my applicationcontext I have want to load the env-variable:

<bean id="propertyPlaceholderConfigurer"
        class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
        <property name="locations">
                <list>
                        <value>classpath:settings-${env}.properties
                        </value>
                </list>
        </property>
        <property name="ignoreUnresolvablePlaceholders">
                <value>true</value>
        </property>
</bean>

So whats the problem, should’nt it work both ways?

Answer 1

I think you are confusing Spring’s PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer with Maven’s Filtering mechanism. These are similar but completely separate mechanisms (but they can be used together).

• Spring’s PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer allows you to acquire values from a properties file for use inside your Spring application context.

• Maven’s filtering allows you to replace values in text files (including properties files) with values from your Maven properties and environment.

You can combine them but then it becomes a two stage process. Your Maven build uses filtering to put values in your properties files and then in turn this can be read by Spring. Confused? (I am)