Read property file outside war using spring - spring

Question

enter code hereI have a property file placed in the etc folder. "myapplication.properties" and few other property files in each sub module.. i am try to do the following
<bean class="org.springframework.web.context.support.ServletContextPropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="searchContextAttributes" value="true"/>
<property name="contextOverride" value="true"/>
<property name="ignoreResourceNotFound" value="true"/>
<property name="locations">
<list>
<value>classpath:application.properties</value>
<value>${config}</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="ignoreUnresolvablePlaceholders" value="true"/>
</bean>
I am trying to do mvn -Dconfig=~/my.properties jetty:run
The properties are read from application.properties but not for config..
While running application i get the ${jdbc.url} not correct .. This url is present in my.properties ..
How can this be achieved ?
Thanks

Answer 1

This is what I had, to run it
<bean id="placeholderConfigConfig" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="systemPropertiesModeName">
<value>SYSTEM_PROPERTIES_MODE_OVERRIDE</value>
</property>
<property name="ignoreUnresolvablePlaceholders">
<value>true</value>
</property>
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="location" value="file:${config}" />
</bean>
And add -Dconfig=/var//my.properties in the MAVEN_OPTS.. and did mvn jetty:run
Another one line solution I found.. instead of making verbose configuration just do
<context:property-placeholder location="file:${config}"/>

Answer 2

I think this feature becomes available in spring 3.1 via the new Environment abstraction. See the following spring blog for details:
http://blog.springsource.com/2011/02/15/spring-3-1-m1-unified-property-management/.
If spring 3.1 is not an option you can hard-code the filename and path in the spring xml configuration file to some well-known location and then developers can symlink against it.