I have seen projects where a standalone application.properties is defined under src/test/resources containing all the properties from the default application.properties defined under src/main/resources while overriding properties for testing purposes. The disadvantage of this approach is that every change (adding/removing/updating of properties) must be done in both application.properties, otherwise tests may fail.
On the other hand I have seen projects where only a context based property file is defined under src/test/resources, say application-test.properties containing only the overriden properties for testing purposes. This approach merges the default application.properties under src/main/resources and the application-test.properties under src/test/resources. The respective context must be activated in test classes via #ActiveProfiles, say #ActiveProfiles("test")
What is the approach you follow and why? Is there any best practice or recommendation for this?
Thanks for your replies in advance.
Profiles are generally used to "map" different Spring beans accordingly. I've seen that people usually stick to three of them for most of the workflows: development, test, and production — mainly in tutorials and blogs.
I use profiles aligned with the actual environments the application is going to be deployed at since it's more realistic. So I always run the tests with the local profile. If I need any specific settings for running the tests, I just redefine an application.properties file under src/test/resources and overwrite what's needed.
In this way, you would always effectively have what's going to be used to run the application in each environment within src/main/resources, and if anything needs to be overwritten only for testing, the src/test/resources/application.properties could take care of that.
For instance, let's say your src/main/resources/application.yaml file looks like:
application:
key: value-common
another-key: value-common-another
spring:
profiles:
active: default
---
spring:
config:
activate:
on-profile: local
main:
banner-mode: console
---
spring:
config:
activate:
on-profile: test
This defines effectively two profiles: local and test — because default would have what's common to both. Now, if you place an application.properties file with the following content in src/test/resources:
application.key: value-common-test
...everything will stay the same, but application.key will be bound to value-common-test instead when you run the tests (for any profile). If you happen to just run the application, it will be bound to value-common instead.
I am trying to revamp my microservice to maintain a single application yaml rather maintaining multiple profiles. Initially I was maintaining different profiles and the common configurations were repeated across the helm environment specific values yaml. Now the strategy is to move everything to values.yml and maintain environment specific values in config map. The problem I face is my application yml now looks very generic with placeholders and for the same reason the test runs fails as I cannot give a default value for each of the configurations in application.yml. The reason being, For Eg: mongodb cluster endpoint format is different in local to other environment. I managed to place a local specific yaml file under test/resources, but not sure it's the right approach. I need to anyway maintain a local specific yaml under main/resources for running locally. So essentially I am duplicating it under test resources as well. Is there any better way of pointing test to load the application-local.yml under main resources so that I can avoid the duplication or is there any better way of doing this as a whole?
1. Working with multiple configs in One File
You can add all your configurations in one property file as illustrated below
spring.application.name: test. ## Used for all profiles
---
spring.config.active.on-profile:dev
spring.database.host: localhost
spring.database.name: testing
---
spring.config.active.on-profile:prod. ##You can use spring.profiles:prod
spring.database.host: localhost
spring.database.name: testing
---
--- marks where yml document splits, while #--- marks where properties file splits.
Multi-document property files are often used in conjunction with the following activation properties
spring.config.activate.on-profile
spring.config.activate.on.on-cloud-platform
All property definitions defined without specifying the profile name are used on all profiles. In the above case spring.application.name will be used on all profiles dev or prod.
When running the application you can manually specify profile or you can set in within the yml or properties on properties that are used throughout the application.
spring.application.name: test
spring.profiles.active: prod
2. Testing your application
when running tests that need to access properties in yml(property)file there is
no need to redefine your configurations.Just add #ActiveProfile("profile-name")
on your tests.
for example:
#ActiveProfiles("dev")
#SpringBootTest(webEnvironmentSpringBootTest.WebEnvironment.RANDOM_PORT)
I am mounting multiple volumes into my pod, each being a configMap that contain different pieces of what would fully construct Spring Cloud bootstrap.yaml file. For example, one configMap may contain the config server URI, and the second configMap may contain overrideSystemProperties property. These configMaps are laid down in files with different names (or with the same name but in different paths) in the pod. My question is is it possible to configure Spring Cloud to use multiple bootstrap.yaml files? I know one can configure Spring to look for additional properties in different locations using spring.config.additional-location. Is it possible to do the same with Spring Cloud bootstrap?
My intention is to have two profiles in a spring boot application - development and production one. Development profile is meant just to override some variables of production profile (like in-memory database instead of database in the cloud). As I expect some changes to be done to production profile in the future, duplicating variables in development profile doesn't seem to be a solution.
So, in Spring Reference I read that spring.profiles.include is supposed to only add properties from referenced profile.
Sometimes, it is useful to have profile-specific properties that add to the active profiles rather than replace them. The spring.profiles.include property can be used to unconditionally add active profiles.
However, from what I've checked it rather overrides it. So, when having two profiles foo and bar, in separate yaml files:
application-foo.yaml:
myproperty: 44
application-bar.yaml:
spring:
profiles:
include: foo
active: bar,foo
myproperty: 55
And setting -Dspring.profiles.active=bar variable in IDE, the runtime value of myproperty is 44. That means that bar, is overriden with foo which was supposed to only add properties, but not to override them. When starting the application, I get:
The following profiles are active: foo,bar
I added spring.profiles.active=bar to application-bar.yaml as suggested by this answer, in another question, but it has no effect - there is no difference when property is there or not (I also tried using dash listing instead of comma separated values).
My question is, is it how it is supposed to work (then Spring Reference is misleading)? If so, are there any solutions for that?
Adding a link to the application source code on a github.
We implemented the Spring active profiles in a slightly different way. Let's say the default properties file, application.yml, contains all default values which is same in both production and development environments.
Create separate properties for production and development files named application-prd.yml and application-dev.yml respectively. These files may contain extra properties or override some of the default properties.
During application startup, we pass the spring.profiles.active as an environment variable. For example,
-Dspring.profiles.active=prd
will pick up application-prd.yml along with application.yml
or
-Dspring.profiles.active=dev
will pick up application-dev.yml along with application.yml
According to the spring boot documentation here, spring.profiles.include is used to add the properties from other profiles. It will add the property from other profiles if the property is not present in active one. But if it is present, then it will overwrite and the last one to be applied wins
Sometimes, it is useful to have profile-specific properties that add to the active profiles rather than replace them. The spring.profiles.include property can be used to unconditionally add active profiles.
Spring Boot 2.4 changes the mechanism for including multiple profiles to use a new profile groups feature, rather than using spring.profiles.include within the profile-specific document. This means that your configuration is no longer valid for new versions of Spring Boot, and would need to be changed.
That said, your use case does not seem to be a great fit for profile groups, as it's not really combining two profiles so much as overriding defaults. Therefore, I recommend using the approach suggested in another answer of putting the common and default properties in a shared application.yaml file, and only including the environment-specific values & overrides in the profile-specific documents.
application.yaml
spring:
myproperty: 44 # Default value
application-bar.yaml
spring:
myproperty: 55 # Override default
Note that Spring Boot supports multi-document files, so these can be combined into a single application.yaml file if desired:
spring:
myproperty: 44 # Default value
---
spring.config.activate.on-profile: bar # These configs apply to the bar profile
spring:
myproperty: 55 # Override default
Relevant 2.4 Changes
It is no longer possible to use spring.profiles.include within a profile-specific document as of Spring Boot 2.4, unless legacy mode is enabled using spring.config.use-legacy-processing=true. Per the 2.4 Spring Boot Config Data Migration Guide:
you can still use the spring.profiles.include property, but only in non profile-specific documents.
This approach has been replaced by the profile groups feature. Per the migration guide:
As discussed above, it’s no longer possible to use spring.profiles.include in a profile-specific document so this file isn’t valid.
Since this use-case is quite common, we’ve tried to provide another way to support it. In Spring Boot 2.4 you can use the “profile groups” feature.
This feature is documented in the Profile Groups section of the Spring Boot reference guide:
A profile group allows you to define a logical name for a related group of profiles.
For example, we can create a production group that consists of our proddb and prodmq profiles.
spring:
profiles:
group:
production:
- "proddb"
- "prodmq"
Our application can now be started using --spring.profiles.active=production to active the production, proddb and prodmq profiles in one hit.
The migration guide points out that the spring.profile.group property cannot be used in profile-specific documents.
The spring.profile.group property cannot be used in profile-specific documents.
You could add a new profile in the application-bar.yaml:
spring.profiles.include: foo,foo-override
myproperty: 33
---
spring.profiles: foo-override
myproperty: 55
The order is: 33 in bar overridden by 44 in foo overridden by 55 in foo-override.
Given:
The files: application-default.yml, application-foo.yml, application-bar.yml
myproperty: default in application-default.yml
myproperty: foo in application-foo.yml
myproperty: bar in application-bar.yml
I think these 2 use cases of using profiles are a little bit opposite in the meaning:
In the most common case (-Dspring.profiles.active but no spring.profiles.include):
When profile foo or boo are activated the properties from
application-foo.yml (or application-bar.yml) will add/override the
ones from application-default.yml.
When profiles foo,bar are activated then properties from bar will add/override those from application-foo.yml and then those from application-default.yml.
E.g: -Dspring.profiles.active=foo,bar the property from application-bar.yml wins (overrides) -> myproperty: bar
In the second case (spring.profiles.include is used)
The properties from the include statement add/overrides the properties from the application-*.yml files which uses spring.profiles.include
I.e.: If application-boo.yml contains the spring.profiles.include=foo then properties from application-foo.bar adds/override properties from from application-bar.yml which add/override those from application-default.yml.
On the other hand (I suppose) if application-boo.yml includes the spring.profiles.include=default,foo then properties from application-foo.yml will add/override those from application-default.yml which add/overrides those from application-bar.yml. So myproperty: bar. I wouldn't recommend the usage of default in combination with spring.profiles.include because this way it mixes the two cases and the override strategy is counterintuitive considering application-default.yml has a special treatment in springboot.
I also admit I am not at all a fan of the spring.profiles.active usage in application-*.yml files. I prefer to activate the profiles with system properties (maven included) or env variables. IMO it makes the whole profiles thing clearer to me.
If with my (herein above)reasoning I am on the wrong path please let me know.
I am reading/practicing a security management tutorial with Spring-boot. I noticed that I could customize the application by using either a file named application.properties or a file named application.ymldepending on the syntax I prefer.
Then I reached a point in the tutorial where it is asked to put this piece of information in application.yml :
security:
sessions: NEVER
Problem : this piece of configuration is obviously arborescent and fits well in application.yml but what would be the equivalent in application.properties which, AFAIK, like every .properties files is not meant to store arborescent data?
Where YAML uses new lines and indentation, a properties file uses . separators. The equivalent configuration in application.properties would be:
security.sessions=NEVER