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Cannot undeploy from Tomcat due to specific Spring JMS configuration

I have used ActiveMQ as JMS implementation (activemq-spring 5.12.1) and Spring JMS integration (spring-jms 4.2.3.RELEASE), all wrapped in Spring Boot web application, being deployed on Tomcat.
I have following Spring configuration (code reduced for the verbosity of code sample):
#Configuration
#EnableJms
public class AppConfiguration {
#Bean
public XAConnectionFactory jmsXaConnection(String activeMqUsername, String activeMqPassword) {
ActiveMQXAConnectionFactory activeMQXAConnectionFactory = new ActiveMQXAConnectionFactory(activeMqUsername, activeMqPassword, activeMqUrl);
ActiveMQPrefetchPolicy prefetchPolicy = new ActiveMQPrefetchPolicy();
prefetchPolicy.setAll(0);
activeMQXAConnectionFactory.setPrefetchPolicy(prefetchPolicy);
return activeMQXAConnectionFactory;
}
#Bean
public DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory jmsListenerContainerFactory(ConnectionFactory connectionFactory, JtaTransactionManager jtaTransactionManager) {
DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory containerFactory = new DefaultJmsListenerContainerFactory();
containerFactory.setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory);
containerFactory.setTransactionManager(jtaTransactionManager);
containerFactory.setSessionTransacted(true);
containerFactory.setTaskExecutor(Executors.newFixedThreadPool(2));
containerFactory.setConcurrency("2-2");
containerFactory.setCacheLevel(DefaultMessageListenerContainer.CACHE_CONSUMER);
return containerFactory;
}
}
My target was to configure two consumers (hence concurrecny set to 2-2) and to prevent any messages caching (hence prefetch policy set to 0).
It works, but causes very unpleasent side effect:
When I try to undeploy the application via Tomcat Manager, it hangs for a while and then indefinitely, every second produces following DEBUG message:
"DefaultMessageListenerContainer:563 - Still waiting for shutdown of 2 Message listener invokers".
Therefore, I am forced to kill Tomcat process every time. What have I done wrong?
One of my lucky shots (documentation both ActiveMQ and Spring JMS was not that helpful), was to set prefetch policy to 1 instead of 0. Then it undeploys gracefully, but I cannot see how it can relate.
Also I am curious, why having cache level set to CACHE_CONSUMER is required for the ActiveMQ to create two consumers. When default setting was left (CACHE_NONE while using external transaction manager), only one consumer was created (while concurrency was still set two 2-2, and so was TaskExecutor).
If it matters, for connection factory and transaction manager, Atomikos is used. I can paste its configuration also, but it seems irrelevant.

Most likely this means the consumer threads are "stuck" in user code; take a thread dump with jstack to see what the container threads are doing.

Programmatically accessing camel property from camel context

The project I am working at the moment uses camel as the routing framework.
When configuring camel context in spring we pass a property file that contains a bunch of global properties needed when configuring camel routes or for controlling run time behavior:
<camel:camelContext xmlns="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring" id="my-id">
<camel:propertyPlaceholder location="my-system.properties" id="global-properties"/>
...
</camel:camelContext>
and say my-system.properties has an entry like below:
my-system.properties
# Global properties that control my-system configuration and run time
...
foo={{bar}}
...
When configuring the routes I can access foo property using the {{foo}} notation. It is also available to other beans using #PropertyInject annotation. However there is one use case in my design when a plain POJO not created by spring (an enum instead but this is not relevant) needs to access my foo property. Because this POJO it is passed the CamelContext as a method argument I find it natural to think I should be able to get the value of foo from there. However I spent a bit of time and could not figure out by myself how.
I know I can load the properties file again or even get the system property System.getProperty("bar") and everything will work but it looks like cheating to me.

There is an api on CamelContext to resolve property placeholders - its the resolvePropertyPlaceholders method:
http://camel.apache.org/maven/current/camel-core/apidocs/org/apache/camel/CamelContext.html#resolvePropertyPlaceholders(java.lang.String)

If your POJO is not being managed by the SpringContext I don't see any way you can automatically inject the property. Although your approach may not seem the most fancy or elegant, it has the advantage of not giving you any overhead you could have by using another injection tool.

Configuring data source URL in Spring without XML

I have a simple Web MVC application using Spring Boot that communicates with a database; the DB is H2 and has been in memory until now. I want to change that, and thus use a jdbc:h2:file:... URL.
Up until now, I have not needed to add any XML to configure my application, and I'd prefer it to stay that way if possible. But I can't figure out how to specify a different JDBC URL. I obtained and inspected the data source by passing it to an #Bean method:
org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSource#745e6f01{ConnectionPool[
defaultAutoCommit=null;
defaultReadOnly=null;
defaultTransactionIsolation=-1;
defaultCatalog=null;
driverClassName=org.h2.Driver;
maxActive=100;
maxIdle=100;
minIdle=10;
initialSize=10;
maxWait=30000;
testOnBorrow=false;
testOnReturn=false;
timeBetweenEvictionRunsMillis=5000;
numTestsPerEvictionRun=0;
minEvictableIdleTimeMillis=60000;
testWhileIdle=false;
testOnConnect=false;
password=********;
url=jdbc:h2:mem:testdb;DB_CLOSE_DELAY=-1;DB_CLOSE_ON_EXIT=FALSE;
username=sa;
validationQuery=null;
validationQueryTimeout=-1;
validatorClassName=null;
validationInterval=30000;
accessToUnderlyingConnectionAllowed=true;
removeAbandoned=false;
removeAbandonedTimeout=60;
logAbandoned=false;
connectionProperties=null;
initSQL=null;
jdbcInterceptors=null;
jmxEnabled=true;
fairQueue=true;
useEquals=true;
abandonWhenPercentageFull=0;
maxAge=0;
useLock=false;
dataSource=null;
dataSourceJNDI=null;
suspectTimeout=0;
alternateUsernameAllowed=false;
commitOnReturn=false;
rollbackOnReturn=false;
useDisposableConnectionFacade=true;
logValidationErrors=false;
propagateInterruptState=false;
ignoreExceptionOnPreLoad=false;
}
(newlines mine)
The setup of that bean seems rather intricate, so I want to interfere with it as little as possible - just replace the default JDBC URL.
How can I configure individual properties for Spring to create the datasource? Preferably in Java, but if there is a concise XML way I'm happy as well. I just want to avoid adding 100 lines of boilerplate for something equivalent to url=...

A DataSource is auto configured by Spring Boot for you. To influence how and what there are several properties you can set. Those are prefixed with spring.datasource, for a list take a look at the Spring Boot Reference Guide for a full list.
In your case simply add the following to the application.properties file
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:h2:file:...
This will tell Spring Boot to use this URL instead of the default.
As H2 is considered an in-memory database and not a regular database, when using JPA this will lead to your database to be dropped when the application is stopped. To fix this simply add the following
spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto=update
To specify a dialect simply add the following
spring.jpa.database-platform=org.hibernate.dialect.H2Dialect
or even simpler
spring.jpa.database=H2

Spring prototypes inherit properties at runtime

What is the best approach for creating services that load a property set at runtime (bean is passed "xyz" and loads xyz.properties)? These properties files need to be able to be dropped into a folder outside the classpath before a command is entered to start the service (edit: this could happen at any time while the program is running).
I already have a system to do this that we've been using for over a year, but I'm migrating to spring to make the code more modular (customize services more easily through DI) and easier to maintain. My current method of creating an environment and then passing it with "this" to the dependencies just seems upside down from an IoC standpoint.
Is there a way to use a PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer without hardcoding the name of the property file? Maybe just a reference to a variable I pass into the constructor of the service that its dependencies can load? So far, it looks like I will have to create a service and inject its dependencies without any config and then call a separate load method for each to pass in the properties, but that just seems like I'm not really using spring.
USE CASE: The app will pool client connections to various servers and will forward requests from other applications to these servers. New profiles must be able to be added by non-programmers without taking down or restarting the app. The profiles will include basic things like host, port, and login info, but also more complex things like whether to use tcp/http, ssl/https (which will determine which client type to use), and timeouts and pool min/max/etc (which will need default values).

I tried with PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer and frankly, I couldn't wrap my head around it, somehow. It's easy enough to use when you use the existing options but I couldn't extend the framework.
So my approach was much more simple:
Create an annotation #InjectConfig which takes a config key as parameter.
In your beans/services, annotate fields or public setters with this annotation.
Write a BeanPostProcessor which takes options from a "config provider" and injects them into the fields / setters.
Now all you need is a config provider. Inject that into the post processor and you're done.
Note: I prefer annotating setters because that means you can easily configure your services from tests (just call the setters) without having to come up with smart names for 238576 config files.
EDIT If you have many configs, then a config factory might be a better choice:
Create a key to describe a config bundle (I usually use an enum or a new type here to prevent typos)
Put this key into the service when you create it (manually or via Spring)
Write a config factory that can return Properties or a Map for a config key.
Inject this factory into your service
In the init code of your service, use the key to lookup your config via the factory.
Using this approach, you can have a dummy factory that always returns the same thing in tests and a more complex factory for production.
The real factory can then be configured via spring so it knows where to look for configuration files. One approach is to register a java.io.File per config key. Now your concerns (configuring a service and loading configs) are completely separated.

PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer reads and initialize files on application context initialization and only once. So most probably you cannot configure it at runtime.
But you can have variables. For example, for my case I have default properties and user specific properties. So PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer loads properties from classpath first and after that is trying to find additional properties at defined location (user home folder). I user's property file exists so configurer loads it and override properties.
Here is my example:
<bean id="config" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="ignoreResourceNotFound" value="true"/> <!-- do not throw exception if file not found -->
<property name="locations">
<list>
<value>classpath:server.properties</value>
<value>file:${user.home}/user.properties</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
I'm not sure that this answer is what you're exactly need. But I'm trying to guess what is your actual task. So if you need re-read properties runtime each time you access them you have to do it manually like you did before because spring application context helps you configure your application initial configuration.

It seems like the best approach may be to use a ServiceManager that contains the main ApplicationContext and then have each Service initialize its own FileSystemXmlApplicationContext with the main context as the parent like so:
public class ServiceManager {
ApplicationContext appContext;
String APP_HOME = System.getProperty("user.home") + File.separator;
public void init() {
//set main spring context
appContext = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(AppConfig.class);
}
public void start(String serviceName) throws Exception {
ApplicationContext serviceContext = new FileSystemXmlApplicationContext(
new String[]{APP_HOME + serviceName + ".xml"}, //path to child ctx
appContext); //reference to parent ctx to build hierarchy
Service service = (Service) serviceContext.getBean("service");
service.start();
}
}
The ApplicationContext is a bit heavy to be duplicating, but memory is pretty cheap these days and this provides total separation of concerns. I still have shared logging and an event system managed by the parent context, and each service is now simplified in its own config. I built a proof of concept using two services, and it seems to work fine so far. I'll add another comment once I finish the other services and finish testing.
reference:
http://techo-ecco.com/blog/spring-application-context-hierarchy-and-contextsingletonbeanfactorylocator/

How to portably read configuration data from a servlet

I'm writing a Java servlet that needs to read some site-specific
configuration data; I would like it to be easily accessible/modifiable
by the sysadmins at deployment time. There is no sensible default,
so the data has to be provided by the site admin.
It consists of a few string key/value pairs (think Properties).
It would only be read once (at initialization time).
I'm aware of this SO question
and the ServletContext.getInitParameter() mechanism, but as far as
my understanding goes, they require the data to be bundled in the
servlet package (either as a properties file, or specified in the
web.xml), which makes it inconvenient to upgrade the servlet code.
Is there any "standard" interface for a servlet to get this kind of
key/value configuration data? It would be ok if the programming
interface is the same everywhere, but the actual way of setting the
configuration data depends on the actual servlet container being used.
I'm looking preferably at portable solutions, but I'd be content with
something that only works in Tomcat and Jetty.

The recommended way to configure an application server for a web application is per JNDI.
Every application server (including Jetty and Tomcat) allows you to configure JNDI parameters.
For Jetty you can add the following to your jetty.xml to add the JNDI parameter param.file:
<!-- JNDI java:comp/env -->
<New id="param.file" class="org.mortbay.jetty.plus.naming.EnvEntry">
<Arg>param.file</Arg>
<Arg type="java.lang.String"><SystemProperty name="jetty.home" default="."/>etc/config.properties</Arg>
<Arg type="boolean">true</Arg>
</New>
Then in your servlet you can read the JNDI parameter:
import javax.naming.InitialContext;
import javax.naming.NamingException;
...
public Object readJndi(String paramName) {
Object jndiValue = null;
try {
final InitialContext ic = new InitialContext();
jndiValue = ic.lookup("java:comp/env/" + paramName);
} catch (NamingException e) {
// handle exception
}
return jndiValue;
}
public String getConfigPath() {
return (String) readJndi("param.file");
}
The way to set JNDI values differs for other application servers but the code to read the configuration is always the same.

The Servlet init parameters are the right (and standardized) way of defining properties which can be configured by the administrator. Many of the application servers provide a GUI backend where the parameters can be configured.
For an example for Tomcat, see Defining Tomcat servlet context parameters

Configure the external location of the properties - either via a jvm argument (when starting the servlet container), or in the web.xml
in the external location use config.properties and read it with java.util.Properties

You may take Preferences or hack with user.home, user.dir, etc. But for a few key/value keep things simple.
Write a small Singleton to wrap around Properties and load them from a fix & absolute location
public class LocalConfig extends Properties {
public static LocalConfig $ = new LocalConfig();
private LocalConfig() throws IOException {
load(new File("/etc/myconfig.properties"));
}
}