Setting properties in Spring - spring

Question

Is there a way to change the properties of a file? I'm trying to run selenium tests in parallel, with Spring and Jetty, so I'm trying to configure the url of the database, the port of the jettyserver and the port of the selenium server. So that I'm able to initialize two or more servers where the tests can run on.
My server.properties file contains this:
jdbc.url=jdbc:hsqldb:hsql://localhost/bibliothouris_scenario
jetty.port=8081
seleniumServer.port=4444
I can read those properties with a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, and I need the database URL, jettyport and seleniumserver port to be flexible.
I have declared them like this:
In my applicationContext.xml:
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="location">
<value>classpath:server.properties</value>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="dataSource" destroy-method="close" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource">
<property name="driverClassName" value="org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver" />
<property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}" />
<property name="username" value="sa" />
<property name="password" value="" />
</bean>
In the serverContext.xml file:
<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="location">
<value>classpath:server.properties</value>
</property>
</bean>
<bean class="com.~companyName~.bibliothouris.jetty.JettyServer" init-method="start" destroy-method="stop">
<constructor-arg value="${jetty.port}" />
<constructor-arg ref="dataSource" />
</bean>
<bean class="org.openqa.selenium.server.SeleniumServer" init-method="start" destroy-method="stop">
<constructor-arg>
<bean class="org.openqa.selenium.server.RemoteControlConfiguration">
<property name="port" value="${seleniumServer.port}" />
<property name="singleWindow" value="true" />
<property name="timeoutInSeconds" value="10" />
</bean>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>
<bean class="com.thoughtworks.selenium.DefaultSelenium" init-method="start" destroy-method="stop" lazy-init="true">
<constructor-arg>
<bean class="com.thoughtworks.selenium.HttpCommandProcessor">
<constructor-arg value="localhost" />
<constructor-arg value="${seleniumServer.port}" />
<constructor-arg value="*firefox c:/~companyname~/firefox/firefox.exe" />
<constructor-arg value="http://localhost:${jetty.port}" />
</bean>
</constructor-arg>
</bean>
When I change the data in server.properties the selenium tests run on the right servers with the right ports, without failures.
So now I'm looking for a method to change the properties in the server.properties file.
Kind regards and thanks in advance

Answer 1

I solved this by having a flag in my build process (I'm using Maven) that chose which property file to include in the final war. This way you can include different artifacts (different property files) with different properties without having to mess with the low level property support of Spring.
If you do need to do this is Spring only, I would recommend going for a Java based configuration, where you can get and set the properties by in code not in XML.

Answer 2

Is there a way to change the
properties of a file?
No, but you could solve this in the following ways.
Split the properties into jdbc.properties (for applicationContext.xml) and test.properties (for serverContext.xml)
override server.properties via a src/test/resources resource
use system properties in addition to server.properties (use PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer.setSystemPropertiesMode for this)

Answer 3

Thanks for the help guys, without your info, I couldn't find my own solution. Here it is:
try {
Properties props = new Properties();
FileInputStream fileInputStream = new FileInputStream(
"C:\\~CompanyName~\\workspace\\bibliothouris\\infrastructure\\src\\main\\resources\\server.properties");
props.load(fileInputStream);
fileInputStream.close();
props.setProperty("seleniumServer.port", "4445");
FileOutputStream fileOutputStream = new FileOutputStream(
"C:\\~CompanyName~\\workspace\\bibliothouris\\infrastructure\\src\\main\\resources\\server.properties");
props.store(fileOutputStream, "");
fileOutputStream.close();
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
I've wrote this piece of code in a testclass, now I have to create a method of it, which takes a few arguments (the URL, jettyport and seleniumport). And I have to change the path to a relative one.
Thanks for the help!