Question

Java’s Properties object hasn’t changed much since pre-Java 5, and it hasn’t got Generics support, or very useful helper methods (defined pattern to plug in classes to process properties or help to load all properties files in a directory, for example).

Has development of Properties stopped? If so, what’s the current best practice for this kind of properties saving/loading?

Or have I completely missed something?

Answer 1

A lot of the concepts around Properties are definitely ancient and questionable. It has very poor internationalization, it adds methods that today would just be accomplished via a Generic type, it extends Hashtable, which is itself generally out of use, since its synchronization is of limited value and it has methods which are not in harmony with the Collections classes introduced in 1.2, and many of the methods added to the Properties class essentially provide the kind of type safety that is replaced by Generics.

If implemented today it would probably be a special implementation of a Map<String, String>, and certainly support better encoding in the properties file.

That being said, there isn’t really a replacement that doesn’t add complexity. Sure the java.util.prefs.Preferences api is the “new and improved” but it adds a layer of complexity that is well beyond what is needed for many use cases. Just using XML is also an option (which at least fixes the internationalization issues) but a properties object often fits the needs just fine, at which point use it.