Netflix Archaius properties in a Spring project

Biju KunjummenMarch 11th, 2015Last Updated: March 9th, 2015

2 336 2 minutes read

Archaius Basics

Netflix Archaius is a library for managing configuration for an application. Consider a properties file “sample.properties” holding a property called “myprop”:

myprop=myprop_value_default

This is how the file is loaded up using Archaius:

ConfigurationManager
                .loadCascadedPropertiesFromResources("sample");

String myProp = DynamicPropertyFactory.getInstance().getStringProperty("myprop", "NOT FOUND").get();

assertThat(myProp, equalTo("myprop_value_default"));

Archaius can load property appropriate to an environment, consider that there is a “sample-perf.properties” with the same configuration over-ridden for perf environment:

myprop=myprop_value_perf

Now Archaius can be instructed to load the configuration in a cascaded way by adding the following in sample.properties file:

myprop=myprop_value_default

@next=sample-${@environment}.properties

And the test would look like this:

ConfigurationManager.getDeploymentContext().setDeploymentEnvironment("perf");
ConfigurationManager
        .loadCascadedPropertiesFromResources("sample");

String myProp = DynamicPropertyFactory.getInstance().getStringProperty("myprop", "NOT FOUND").get();

assertThat(myProp, equalTo("myprop_value_perf"));

Spring Property basics

Spring property basics are very well explained at the Spring Framework reference site here. In short, if there is a property file “sample.properties”, it can be loaded up and referenced the following way:

@Configuration
@PropertySource("classpath:/sample.properties")
public class AppConfig {
    @Autowired
    Environment env;

    @Bean
    public TestBean testBean() {
        TestBean testBean = new TestBean();
        testBean.setName(env.getProperty("myprop"));
        return testBean;
    }


}

Or even simpler, they can be de-referenced with placeholders this way:

@Configuration
@PropertySource("classpath:/sample.properties")
public class AppConfig {
    @Value("${myprop}")
    private String myProp;

    @Bean
    public TestBean testBean() {
        TestBean testBean = new TestBean();
        testBean.setName(myProp));
        return testBean;
    }

    @Bean
    public static PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer propertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer() {
        return new PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer();
    }

}

Making Archaius properties visible to Spring

So now the question is how to get the Archaius properties visible in Spring, the approach I have taken is a little quick and dirty one but can be cleaned up to suite your needs. My approach is to define a Spring PropertySource which internally delegates to Archaius:

import com.netflix.config.ConfigurationManager;
import com.netflix.config.DynamicPropertyFactory;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import org.springframework.core.env.PropertySource;

import java.io.IOException;

public class SpringArchaiusPropertySource extends PropertySource<Void> {


    private static final Logger LOGGER = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SpringArchaiusPropertySource.class);


    public SpringArchaiusPropertySource(String name) {
        super(name);
        try {
            ConfigurationManager
                    .loadCascadedPropertiesFromResources(name);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            LOGGER.warn(
                    "Cannot find the properties specified : {}", name);
        }

    }

    @Override
    public Object getProperty(String name) {
         return DynamicPropertyFactory.getInstance().getStringProperty(name, null).get();
    }
}

The tricky part is registering this new PropertySource with Spring, this can be done using an ApplicationContextInitializer which is triggered before the application context is initialized:

import com.netflix.config.ConfigurationBasedDeploymentContext;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextInitializer;
import org.springframework.context.ConfigurableApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.util.StringUtils;

public class SpringProfileSettingApplicationContextInitializer
        implements ApplicationContextInitializer<ConfigurableApplicationContext> {

    @Override
    public void initialize(ConfigurableApplicationContext ctx) {
        ctx.getEnvironment()
                .getPropertySources()
                .addFirst(new SpringArchaiusPropertySource("samples"));
    }
}

And finally registering this new ApplicationContextInitializer with Spring is described here. This is essentially it, now the Netflix Archaius properties should work in a Spring application.

Reference:

Netflix Archaius properties in a Spring project from our JCG partner Biju Kunjummen at the all and sundry blog.