Import spring context with specific profile - spring

Question

In my java-spring-maven web-application I'm using multiple spring contexts (single context for each project).
For the sake of simplicity let's say I have 2 spring contexts: a.xml and b.xml, each belong to a project: project A and project B where A depends upon B.
a.xml is importing b.xml like this:
<import resource="classpath*:/b.xml" />
So when loading a.xml, b.xml is loaded as well.
Now, I have 2 spring profiles in my system: test and production that are used by my contexts (loading different property place holders for each profile).
So in a.xml I got:
<!-- Production profile -->
<beans profile="production">
<context:property-placeholder
location="classpath:props-for-a.properties"
ignore-unresolvable="true" ignore-resource-not-found="true" />
</beans>
<!-- Test profile -->
<beans profile="test">
<context:property-placeholder
location="classpath*:test-props-for-a.properties"
ignore-unresolvable="true" />
</beans>
And the same convention in b.xml (only loading different properties files).
My properties file are under src/main/resources (production files) and src/test/resources (test files).
Now I have this unit test that looks like this:
#RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
#ContextConfiguration(locations = { "classpath:/a.xml" })
#ActiveProfiles(profiles = "test")
public class SomeTestClass {
#Test
public void testMethod() {
//Some Test
}
}
In this case, a.xml is loaded in "test" profile and as expected the desired files are loaded (test-props-for-a). b.xml is imported by a.xml but now I experience a strange experience, my properties values from the property file loaded from b.xml are not injected.
For example if I have this property in my property file:
connection-ip=1.2.3.4
and in my class I got:
#Value("${connection-ip}")
private String connectionIP;
The value of connectionIP will be "${connection-ip}" instead of "1.2.3.4".
Notice that the file location starts with classpath*, without the * I get a FileNotFoundException:
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanInitializationException: Could not load properties; nested exception is java.io.FileNotFoundException: class path resource [test-props-for-b.properties] cannot be opened because it does not exist
To be clear, the file test-props-for-b.properties resides under src/test/resources of project B. Why do I get this?
If I run a test that loads b.xml directly (not imported via a.xml) it works just fine, the test properties in the file test-props-for-b.properties are loaded as expected.
Am I doing something wrong? Could this be a bug? If so, can you suggest a workaround?
UPDATE
I removed the star (*) from the path to my properties file (test-props-for-b.properties) and debugged spring code. In class ClassPathResource this method throws the exception:
public InputStream getInputStream() throws IOException {
InputStream is;
if (this.clazz != null) {
is = this.clazz.getResourceAsStream(this.path);
}
else {
is = this.classLoader.getResourceAsStream(this.path);
}
if (is == null) {
throw new FileNotFoundException(getDescription() + " cannot be opened because it does not exist");
}
return is;
}
Here are the variables values:
this.clazz is null.
this.path holds the file name test-props-for-b.properties
And this command returns null:
this.classLoader.getResourceAsStream(this.path);
Why is that? I can clearly see the file under src/test/resources of project B.

Answer 1

After investigating the issue this is my conclusion:
The file could easily be loaded if I could use the suitable class-loader, meaning that in order to load a file from project A, any class-loader of a class from project A could do the trick, same for project B. But when using the property-placeholder of spring the class-loader of ClassPathResource.java is used, and when it tries to load a resource from a different project it fails to do so (a ClassPathResource gets initialized per property-placeholder, hence per project in my case).
I don't really know how to fix it, currently I have implemented an ugly workaround by duplicating my test properties files (added file test-props-for-b.properties to src/test/resources folder of project A, this way I have it duplicated in src/test/resource of project B and A as well).
I'm still looking for a cleaner way.

Answer 2

Have you tried to define the spring profiles outside instead of #ActiveProfiles(profiles = "test")?
One example is to define it in maven surefire plugin in this way:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-surefire-plugin</artifactId>
<version>${surefire.version}</version>
<configuration>
<systemPropertyVariables>
<spring.profiles.active>test</spring.profiles.active>
</systemPropertyVariables>
<!-- THE REST OF CONFIGURATIONS -->
</configuration>
</plugin>