Spring profile XML tutorial

last modified October 18, 2023

Spring profile XML tutorial shows how to configure profiles in XML for a Spring application.

Spring is a popular Java application framework for creating enterprise applications.

Spring profile

A profile is a named set of beans declared for a specific environment such as development or production. Profiles can be configured in XML or using annotations.

Spring profile example

The application defines two profiles: production and development.

pom.xml src ├───main │ ├───java │ │ └───com │ │ └───zetcode │ │ Application.java │ └───resources │ database-dev.properties │ database-prod.properties │ logback.xml └───test └───java

This is the project structure. We have two property files: database-dev.properties and database-prod.properties.

pom.xml

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?> <project xmlns=“http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi=“http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation=“http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd"> <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

<groupId>com.zetcode</groupId>
<artifactId>profileex</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

<properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <maven.compiler.source>17</maven.compiler.source>
    <maven.compiler.target>17</maven.compiler.target>
    <spring-version>5.3.23</spring-version>

</properties>

<dependencies>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
        <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
        <version>1.4.0</version>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
        <version>${spring-version}</version>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        <version>${spring-version}</version>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-jdbc</artifactId>
        <version>${spring-version}</version>
    </dependency>

</dependencies>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
            <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>3.1.0</version>
            <configuration>
                <mainClass>com.zetcode.Application</mainClass>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

</project>

In the pom.xml file, we have basic Spring dependencies spring-core, spring-context, spring-jdbc, and logging logback-classic dependency.

The exec-maven-plugin is used for executing Spring application from the Maven on the command line.

resources/logback.xml

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?> <configuration> <logger name=“org.springframework” level=“ERROR”/> <logger name=“com.zetcode” level=“INFO”/>

<appender name="consoleAppender" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
    <encoder>
        <Pattern>%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} %blue(%-5level) %magenta(%logger{36}) - %msg %n
        </Pattern>
    </encoder>
</appender>

<root>
    <level value="INFO" />
    <appender-ref ref="consoleAppender" />
</root>

</configuration>

The logback.xml is a configuration file for the Logback logging library.

resources/database-dev.properties

db.url=jdbc:h2:mem:testdb db.username=testuser db.password=s$cret

These are development properties.

resources/database-prod.properties

db.url=jdbc:postgresql://localhost/mydb db.username=user7 db.password=s$cret

These are production properties.

resources/my-beans.xml

<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8”?> <beans xmlns=“http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi=“http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:context=“http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xsi:schemaLocation=“http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

<context:property-placeholder location="classpath:database-${spring.profiles.active}.properties"/>

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.SimpleDriverDataSource">
    <property name="url" value="${db.url}"/>
    <property name="username" value="${db.username}"/>
    <property name="password" value="${db.password}"/>
</bean>

</beans>

The my-beans.xml contains a dataSource bean. The <context:property-placeholder> tag configures properties for the datasource, based on the active Spring profile.

com/zetcode/Application.java

package com.zetcode;

import org.slf4j.Logger; import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory; import org.springframework.context.support.GenericXmlApplicationContext; import org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.SimpleDriverDataSource;

public class Application {

private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Application.class);

public static void main(String[] args) {

    System.setProperty("spring.profiles.active", "prod");

    var ctx = new GenericXmlApplicationContext("my-beans.xml");

    var dataSource = (SimpleDriverDataSource) ctx.getBean("dataSource");

    logger.info("Url: {}", dataSource.getUrl());
    logger.info("User name: {}", dataSource.getUsername());
    logger.info("Password: {}", dataSource.getPassword());

    ctx.close();
}

}

The application retrieves the dataSource bean and prints its properties. The active property is set with System.setProperty method. Alternatively, we can set the property as a VM variable -Dspring.profiles.active=prod or in IDE settings.

$ mvn -q -Dspring.profiles.active=dev exec:java 20:30:45.832 INFO com.zetcode.Application - Url: jdbc:h2:mem:testdb 20:30:45.832 INFO com.zetcode.Application - User name: testuser 20:30:45.832 INFO com.zetcode.Application - Password: s$cret

We run the application with the profile set on the command line

In this article we have created a development and production profile for a Spring application.

My name is Jan Bodnar, and I am a passionate programmer with extensive programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. To date, I have authored over 1,400 articles and 8 e-books. I possess more than ten years of experience in teaching programming.

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