Question

We are using a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to use java properties in our Spring configuration (details here)

eg:

<foo name="port">
  <value>${my.server.port}</value>
</foo>

We would like to add an additional property, but have a distributed system where existing instances could all use a default value. Is there a way to avoid updating all of our properties files, by indicating a default value in the Spring config for when there isn’t an overriding property value defined?

Answer 1

Are you looking for the PropertyOverrideConfigurer documented here

http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/2.5.x/reference/beans.html#beans-factory-overrideconfigurer

The PropertyOverrideConfigurer,
another bean factory post-processor,
is similar to the
PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, but in
contrast to the latter, the original
definitions can have default values or
no values at all for bean properties.
If an overriding Properties file does
not have an entry for a certain bean
property, the default context
definition is used.