Inject properties via annotation - spring

Question

I am new for spring security. I've seen many posts on how to inject values via annotation from external property file. I've tried many ways, but I always end up with java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Could not resolve placeholder 'val.id' exception.
Can you provide me some tips how to handle this exception please?
My java class is the following one:
#Controller
public class Employee {
#Value("${val.id}")
public String valId;
public String getValId() {
return valId;
}
public void setValId(String valId) {
this.valId = valId;
}
My property file is called val.properties which is located under WEB-INF, and its content is
val.id=xyz
I put the following in my main context bean.
<context:property-placeholder location="/WEB-INF/*.properties" />
<bean id="valProp" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer"
p:location="/WEB-INF/val.properties"/>
A continuous question:
The injecting values from properties file to annotated beans works fine as I accepted the answer above. However, I cannot able to inject it to #PreAuthorize(...) annotation by following the same procedure.
Assume I want to secure a method called 'update'. This method is allowed if and only if valId is equal to empId. values of valId and empId are initialized in the val.properties file.
my java bean is:
public class Employee {
public String valId;
public String empId;
public String getValId() {
return valId;
}
public void setValId(String valId) {
this.valId = valId;
}
public String getEmpId() {
return empId;
}
public void setEmpId(String empId) {
this.empId = empId;
}
}
my property file contains:
val.id=nn
emp.id=nn
I have the place holder configuration in my main context file:
<context:property-placeholder location="/WEB-INF/*.properties" />
<bean id="valProp" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertiesFactoryBean"
p:location="/WEB-INF/val.properties"/>
My PreAuthorize annotation (method security) is:
#PreAuthorize("(#{valProp['val.id']} == #{valProp['emp.id']})")
public boolean update(){
//if accessable
return true;
}
But the expression #{valProp['val.id']} == #{valProp['emp.id']} is not evaluated.
Did I do any mistake to inject values? It was worked when I annotate member variables, but it doesn't work here. Any idea please? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

try to consider the following
1). change your annotation to:
#Value("#{valProp['val.id']}")
2). Replace PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer by PropertiesFactoryBean.
Hope this will resolve the exception.

Answer 2

The reason why the exception is thrown is, because the property placeholder by default throws an exception when a values cannot be resolved.
Furthermore you have two property placeholders, via which probably not all values can be resolved.
You can change this behaviour via setting the ignore-unresolvable property:
<context:property-placeholder location="/WEB-INF/*.properties" ignore-unresolvable="true" />
<bean id="valProp" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer"
p:location="/WEB-INF/val.properties" p:ignoreUnresolvablePlaceholders="true" />
Note however that b< turning off this feature typos in a property file will not be detected.