Value in properties file split by comma, reading file only loads first element

Question

I have a properties file called configuration.properties, within configuration.properties is the key-value pair:

email.recipients = [email protected], [email protected]

In my Util.java class I load the configuration.properties file:

import org.apache.commons.configuration.PropertiesConfiguration;
import org.apache.commons.configuration.ConfigurationException;

PropertiesConfiguration config = new PropertiesConfiguration("configuration.properties");
EMAIL_RECIPIENT_STRING = config.getString("email.recipients");

I expected to have EMAIL_RECIPIENT_STRING = "[email protected], [email protected]", but I get EMAIL_RECIPIENT_STRING = "[email protected]" only. What's the reason for this happening?

Answer 1

It appears you're using Apache's PropertiesConfiguration. The docs states

value can contain value delimiters and will then be interpreted as a list of tokens. Default value delimiter is the comma ','.

getString only returns the first token. You need to use getStringArray to return all the properties

String recipients = config.getStringArray("email.recipients");

Answer 2

Actually propConfig.setDelimiterParsingDisabled(true) is working, but you must load the config file after this setting, for example:

propConfig = new PropertiesConfiguration();
propConfig.setDelimiterParsingDisabled(true);
propConfig.load(propertiesFile);

if your code like is :

propConfig = new PropertiesConfiguration(propertiesFile); 
propConfig.setDelimiterParsingDisabled(true);

then the setting won't work