Spring boot external configuration in standalone jetty

Question

I am building a spring boot application. I want to configure my database properties externally, so anyone can run war file from any machine. How do I configure application.properties externally? I am following this documentation http://docs.spring.io/autorepo/docs/spring-boot/1.0.1.RELEASE/reference/html/boot-features-external-config.html

So I created a app.properties file in jetty's home directory.

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:sqlserver://mymachine:1433;databasename=TESTDB
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver
spring.datasource.username=someuser
spring.datasource.password=somepass

And trying to run war file through jetty, but it is not detecting application.properties for some reason.

java -jar ../start.jar --spring.config.location=file:///E:/Tools/jetty-distribution-9.3.12.v20160915/demo-base/webapps/app.properties

When I run above command, I get following error in jetty

Caused by:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Property 'driverClassName' must not be empty
        at org.springframework.util.Assert.hasText(Assert.java:168)
        at org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource.setDriverClassName(DriverManagerDataSource.java:1
24)
        at com.abc.mycompany.sts.config.settings.PersistenceContext.dataSource(PersistenceContext.java:55)
        at com.abc.mycompany.sts.config.settings.PersistenceContext$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$368bb66a.CGLIB$dataSource$2
(<generated>)
        at com.abc.mycompany.sts.config.settings.PersistenceContext$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$368bb66a$$FastClassBySpring
CGLIB$$25ca0903.invoke(<generated>)
        at org.springframework.cglib.proxy.MethodProxy.invokeSuper(MethodProxy.java:228)
        at org.springframework.context.annotation.ConfigurationClassEnhancer$BeanMethodInterceptor.intercept(Configurati
onClassEnhancer.java:356)
        at com.abc.mycompany.sts.config.settings.PersistenceContext$$EnhancerBySpringCGLIB$$368bb66a.dataSource(<genera
ted>)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
        at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.SimpleInstantiationStrategy.instantiate(SimpleInstantiationStrategy
.java:162)
        at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.ConstructorResolver.instantiateUsingFactoryMethod(ConstructorResolv
er.java:588)
        at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.instantiateUsingFactoryMethod(Ab
stractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:1128)
        at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBeanInstance(AbstractAutow
ireCapableBeanFactory.java:1022)
        at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.doCreateBean(AbstractAutowireCap
ableBeanFactory.java:512)
        at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.createBean(AbstractAutowireCapab
leBeanFactory.java:482)

This is my jetty's directory structure

E:\Tools\jetty-distribution-9.3.12.v20160915\demo-base\webapps

On command line I am starting jetty by going to demo-base and running command

java -jar ../start.jar --spring.config.location=file:///E:/Tools/jetty-distribution-9.3.12.v20160915/demo-base/webapps/app.properties

The bean looks like below where I am trying to access properties from external application.properties file

@Bean
public DataSource dataSource() {
    final DriverManagerDataSource dataSource = new DriverManagerDataSource();            
    dataSource.setDriverClassName(env.getProperty(ConfigConstants.DATABASE_DRIVER_CLASS_NAME));
    dataSource.setUrl(env.getProperty(ConfigConstants.DATABASE_URL));
    dataSource.setUsername(env.getProperty(ConfigConstants.DATABASE_USERNAME));
    dataSource.setPassword(env.getProperty(ConfigConstants.DATABASE_PASSWORD));

    return dataSource;
}

This doesn't find my app.properties file. What am I missing?

Answer 1

I see you use env properties to initialize datasource and I would suggest another one solution for you.

Proposition one: it is possible to set properties value on startup like:

java -jar ../start.jar --spring.datasource.url=jdbc:sqlserver://mymachine:1433;databasename=TESTDB --spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver --spring.datasource.username=someuser --spring.datasource.password=somepass

Or if you want mask property names, define your own properties. You have to pack following application.properties file into you jar:

spring.datasource.url=${APP_DB_URL}
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=${APP_DB_DRIVER_CLASS}
spring.datasource.username=${APP_DB_USERNAME}
spring.datasource.password=${APP_DB_PASSWORD}

Next. Before run application set env properties. On *nix platform:

export APP_DB_URL=jdbc:sqlserver://mymachine:1433;databasename=TESTDB
export APP_DB_DRIVER_CLASS=com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver
export APP_DB_USERNAME=someuser
export APP_DB_PASSWORD=somepass

On windows platform:

set APP_DB_URL=jdbc:sqlserver://mymachine:1433;databasename=TESTDB
set APP_DB_DRIVER_CLASS=com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerDriver
set APP_DB_USERNAME=someuser
set APP_DB_PASSWORD=somepass

And finally, just run your jar without any params:

java ../start.jar

I hope this post could be helpful for you.