I have two xml files I'm looking at which define an mbean that uses org.jboss.varia.property.SystemPropertiesService. One is properties-service.xml and lives directly in the deploy directory, the other is further down within my application's ear - let's call it myapp-properties-service.xml.
This mean can define two attributes - a URLList which might take properties of the form ./conf/props/myapp.properties and a Properties attribute which just takes the properties directly (e.g. myproperty=myvalue).
The problem is that while both attributes in both files load properties into the System properties at startup, the behaviour differs when I make a change while JBoss is running.
The Properties attribute in properties-service.xml successfully reloads the properties. The URRList fails to reload the properties and both attributes in myapp-properties-service.xml fail to reload.
Am I mistaken in thinking all four cases should reload properties? My ideal solution would be to provide a URL to myapp-properties-service.xml.
Any suggestions? Thanks.
It will only reload them when you change *-service.xml file. Changing of the files it references is not enough. You must simply touch *-service.xml. I suspect the reason why it does not automatically detect changes is because this list can contain URLs and how do you expect it to know when these files have changed. Changing properties defined within the file works because your modifying the *-service.xml file itself which is watched by JBoss.
Related
I have one WAR file with application.
What I need to do is to deploy this WAR twice in one application server (Wildfly) under two different names - deployment1.war and deployment2.war. So far, this is no problem.
The application in the WAR is reading configuration from configuration file and the path to the configuration is currently hardcoded in the application. I need to change this so the deployment1.war is reading deployment1.conf file and deployment2.war is reading deployment2.conf file.
I don't want to keep two different source codes (differing only in the location of the properties file).
So my question is - is there any possibility to pass specific parameter to deployment instead of whole server? Or any other way how to parametrize concrete deployment?
Thanks
You can use overlay to override a file in your deployment thus using 2 different web.xml each pointing to the proper configuration file. https://docs.wildfly.org/20/Admin_Guide.html#Deployment_Overlays
I am trying to dynamically set all properties at run-time in a java spring application. I am successfully doing that with program arguments/System Properties (a different SO post explaining this in detail here), but I haven't figured out a way to dynamically read all properties in .properties files and edit their values. The property sources stored under the spring application context do not contain properties in the previously mentioned files.
Is it possible to load up a spring app and before creating any beans, step in and edit the values across all properties files being loaded in the project?
The properties added to the properties file are read when the app starts. Once it is up and running, changes to the properties file wouldn't reflect unless you restart the app. There is no way to dynamically update the properties file to reflect in the app.
The only way to dynamically update properties of an app would be to use something like a configuration server. Read about it here.
https://spring.io/guides/gs/centralized-configuration/
I have a webservice that uses Java, REST, Jersey and runs on Tomcat8. The webservice requires access to a database. Depending on where we are in the process the we may be using a testdatabase, production database or something else. Ideally we would like to be able to set which database to use without requiring a code change and recompile.
The approach we have tried is to have a properties file defining the database parameters and use an environment variable to point to the file. This has proved troublesome, first we've had a hard time defining system properties on the Tomcat server that we can read from the application, also it seems like all the files will have to be defined on the classpath, i.e already configured ahead of time and part of the codebase.
This seems like fairly common scenario, so I'm sure there is a recommended way to handle situations like this?
Zack Macomber has a point here. Don't enable your app/service to look up its settings dynamically.
Make your build process dynamic instead.
Maven, Gradle and friends all provide simple ways to modify output depending on build parameters and or tasks/profiles.
In your code always link to the same file (name). The actual file will then be included based on your task and/or build environment. Test config for tests. Production config for production.
In many cases a complete recompilation is not necessary and will therefore be skipped (this depends on your tool, of course).
No code changes at all. Moreover the code will be dumb as hell as it does not need to know anything about context.
Especially when working on something with multiple people this approach provides the most stable long-term-solution. Customizable for those who need some special, local config and most important transparent for all who don't need or don't want to know about runtime environment requirements!
We have a similar case. We have created a second web service on the same endpoint (/admin) which we call to set a few configuration parameters. We also have a DB for persisting the configuration once set. To make life easier, we also created a simple UI to set these values. The user configures the values in the UI, the UI calls the /admin web service, and the /admin service sets the configuration in memory (as properties) as well as in the DB. The main web service uses the properties as dynamic configuration.
Note: we use JWT based authorization to prevent unauthorized access to /admin. But depending upon your need you can keep it unsecure, use basic HTTP auth or go with something more detailed.
Not sure if in this particular case it is wise, but it is possible indeed to create a .properties file anywhere on the filesystem - and link it into your application by means of a Resources element.
https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.0-doc/config/resources.html
The Resources element represents all the resources available to the web application. This includes classes, JAR files, HTML, JSPs and any other files that contribute to the web application. Implementations are provided to use directories, JAR files and WARs as the source of these resources and the resources implementation may be extended to provide support for files stored in other forms such as in a database or a versioned repository.
You would need a PreResources element here, linking to a folder, the contents of which will be made available to the application at /WEB-INF/classes.
<Context antiResourceLocking="false" privileged="true" docBase="${catalina.home}/webapps/myapp">
<Resources className="org.apache.catalina.webresources.StandardRoot">
<!-- external res folder (contains settings.properties) -->
<PreResources className="org.apache.catalina.webresources.DirResourceSet"
base="/home/whatever/path/config/"
webAppMount="/WEB-INF/classes" />
</Resources>
</Context>
Your application now 'sees' the files in /home/whatever/path/config/ as if they were located at /WEB-INF/classes.
Typically, the Resources element is put inside a Context element. The Context element must be put in a file located at:
$CATALINA_BASE/conf/[enginename]/[hostname]/ROOT.xml
See https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.0-doc/config/context.html#Defining_a_context
I'd like to extend/replace the Spring PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to read from a web server as opposed to properties files.
A bit of background:
I work on a project, and we're finding the number of properties files located on the users systems is getting a little unwieldy. We'd like to replace these files with a 'config server' which will store basic key/value pairs and serve them when the user starts up the app.
To avoid making too many changes, I'd like to change the way the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer finds properties - rather than implementing an entirely new way to manage properties. So on startup - Spring will read all properties from a url, and feed these into my spring config xml in the same way as it would have with actual files.
Bonus!
If anyone has any ideas how to do this where properties are reloaded from the server only when they change, will get bonus points (I have no idea if I have the ability to assign bonus points, but I'll try!). That would be a 'nice to have, if there's not too much effort involved' solution.
Spring's PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer (PPC) already uses the Resource interface to specfiy the location from where to read properties (via the setLocation(Resource) method inherited from PropertiesLoaderSupport.
There is an implementing class of this interface called URLResource which probably does what you want. You could simply create a PPC and set the location property with a bean of this type to load the properties from a URL instead of a file. This class also supports file:// type URLs, so you could switch between on- and offline properties loading depending on the URL you use.
In ASP.NET, there is web.config which can hold application-wide settings. Is there a corresponding file (residing outside of the war or jar archive) for a Java EE Servlet?
What I need is some place to point out a configuration file, which currently holds four attributes which in turn, taken together, leads to the database where the rest of the data and configuration is stored. (Server, database, username and password.) These values need to be easy to change without repackaging and redeploying the entire application, hence the configuration file, but hardcoding the path to the configuration file in the application (even if it is as a constant) seems far from optimal.
Any hints? I've tried Google but found very little that seemed relevant - and what I did find appeared hideously over-engineered for my needs.
In ASP.NET, there is web.config which can hold application-wide settings. Is there a corresponding file (residing outside of the war or jar archive) for a Java EE Servlet?
That's the web.xml. You can define settings as <context-param> entries.
<context-param>
<param-name>foo</param-name>
<param-value>bar</param-value>
</context-param>
It's available by ServletContext#getInitParameter(). The ServletContext is in turn available anywhere.
String foo = getServletContext().getInitParameter("foo"); // Contains "bar"
You can also access it by EL.
#{initParam.foo} <!-- prints "bar" -->
What I need is some place to point out a configuration file, which currently holds four attributes which in turn, taken together, leads to the database where the rest of the data and configuration is stored. (Server, database, username and password.) These values need to be easy to change without repackaging and redeploying the entire application, hence the configuration file, but hardcoding the path to the configuration file in the application (even if it is as a constant) seems far from optimal.
As per the emphasis, I'd use a properties file for this particular purpose which is then placed in a path outside the WAR. You just need to add this path to the Java runtime classpath. Then you can obtain it as classpath resource:
Properties properties = new Properties();
properties.load(Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("filename.properties"));
// ...
However, with the particular sole purpose to serve a DB connection, you're indeed better off with a servletcontainer-managed datasource as answered by Qwerky. All you possibly would need to configure is then just the datasource name.
If this is a web app then you'd be better served configuring the database connection as a resource on the server, then getting your app to retrieve it using JNDI. Your app server will have documentation on how to do this, its a basic task.
99% of serious web apps do this, the other 1% should.
You can have your application load an arbitrary external file by simply passing the path as a command-line parameter (to the servlet container startup script). Then store the values in the ServletContext