How to set active spring 3.1 environment profile via a properites file and not via an env variable or system property

We use the new environment profiles feature of spring 3.1. We currently set the active profile by setting the environment variable spring.profiles.active=xxxxx on the server to which we deploy the application.

We think this is a suboptimal solution as the war file we want to deploy should just have an additional properties file which sets the environment in which the spring app context should load so the deployment is not dependent on some env var set on the server.

I tried to figure out how to do that and found:

[`ConfigurableEnvironment.setActiveProfiles()`][1]

which I can use to programmatically set the profile but then I still don't know where and when to execute this code. Somewhere where the spring context loads up? Can I load the parameter I want to pass to the method from a properties file?

UPDATE: I just found at [docs][2] which I might be able to implement to set the active profile?

[1]:

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[2]:

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### In `web.xml`

<context-param>
<param-name>spring.profiles.active</param-name>
<param-value>profileName</param-value>
</context-param>

### Using `WebApplicationInitializer`

This approach is used when you don't have a `web.xml` file in Servlet 3.0 environment and are bootstrapping the Spring completely from Java:


class SpringInitializer extends WebApplicationInitializer {

void onStartup(ServletContext container) {
AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext rootContext = new AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext();
rootContext.getEnvironment().setActiveProfiles("profileName");
rootContext.register(SpringConfiguration.class);
container.addListener(new ContextLoaderListener(rootContext));
}
}

Where `SpringConfiguration` class is annotated with `@Configuration`.

For some reason only one way works for me


public class ActiveProfileConfiguration implements ServletContextListener {
@Override
public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent sce) {
System.setProperty(AbstractEnvironment.DEFAULT_PROFILES_PROPERTY_NAME, "dev");
System.setProperty(AbstractEnvironment.ACTIVE_PROFILES_PROPERTY_NAME, "dev");
}

....

<listener>
<listener-class>somepackahe.ActiveProfileConfiguration</listener-class>
</listener>
<listener>
<listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>

Here is a variation on the P13nApplicationContextInitializer approach. However, this time we obtain the path to env properties from JNDI. In my case I set a JNDI global environment variable as coacorrect/spring-profile = file:/tmp/env.properties


1. In tomcat/tomee server.xml add this: `<Environment name="coacorrect/spring-profile" type="java.lang.String" value="/opt/WebSphere/props"/>`
2. Further, in tomcat/tomee, add to the WAR's META-INF/context.xml `<ResourceLink global="coacorrect/spring-profile" name="coacorrect/spring-profile" type="java.lang.String"/>`
3. In any container, add appropriate <resource-env-ref> in web.xml

public class SpringProfileApplicationContextInitializer implements ApplicationContextInitializer<ConfigurableApplicationContext>{

public static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(SpringProfileApplicationContextInitializer.class);
private static final String profileJNDIName="coacorrect/spring-profile";
private static final String failsafeProfile="remote-coac-dbserver";

@Override
public void initialize(ConfigurableApplicationContext applicationContext) {

ConfigurableEnvironment environment = applicationContext.getEnvironment();

try {
InitialContext ic = new InitialContext();
Object r1 = ic.lookup(profileJNDIName);
if (r1 == null) {
// try the tomcat variant of JNDI lookups in case we are on tomcat/tomee
r1 = ic.lookup("java:comp/env/"+profileJNDIName);
}
if (r1 == null) {
log.error("Unable to locate JNDI environment variable {}", profileJNDIName);
return;
}

String profilePath=(String)r1;
log.debug("Found JNDI env variable {} = {}",r1);
environment.getPropertySources().addFirst(new ResourcePropertySource(profilePath.trim()));
log.debug("Loaded COAC dbprofile path. Profiles defined {} ", Arrays.asList(environment.getDefaultProfiles()));

} catch (IOException e) {
// it's ok if the file is not there. we will just log that info.
log.warn("Could not load spring-profile, defaulting to {} spring profile",failsafeProfile);
environment.setDefaultProfiles(failsafeProfile);
} catch (NamingException ne) {
log.error("Could not locate JNDI variable {}, defaulting to {} spring profile.",profileJNDIName,failsafeProfile);
environment.setDefaultProfiles(failsafeProfile);
}
}
}

The answer from Thomasz is valid as long as the profile name can be provided statically in the web.xml or one uses the new XML-less configuration type where one could programmatically load the profile to set from a properties file.

As we still use the XML version I investigated further and found the following nice solution where you implement your own `ApplicationContextInitializer` where you just add a new PropertySource with a properties file to the list of sources to search for environment specific configuration settings. in the example below one could set the `spring.profiles.active` property in the `env.properties` file.

public class P13nApplicationContextInitializer implements ApplicationContextInitializer<ConfigurableApplicationContext> {

private static Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(P13nApplicationContextInitializer.class);

@Override
public void initialize(ConfigurableApplicationContext applicationContext) {
ConfigurableEnvironment environment = applicationContext.getEnvironment();
try {
environment.getPropertySources().addFirst(new ResourcePropertySource("classpath:env.properties"));
LOG.info("env.properties loaded");
} catch (IOException e) {
// it's ok if the file is not there. we will just log that info.
LOG.info("didn't find env.properties in classpath so not loading it in the AppContextInitialized");
}
}

}

You then need to add that initializer as a parameter to the `ContextLoaderListener` of spring as follows to your `web.xml`:

<context-param>
<param-name>contextInitializerClasses</param-name>
<param-value>somepackage.P13nApplicationContextInitializer</param-value>
</context-param>
<listener>
<listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
</listener>

You can also apply it to `DispatcherServlet`:


<servlet>
<servlet-name>dispatcherServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>contextInitializerClasses</param-name>
<param-value>somepackage.P13nApplicationContextInitializer</param-value>
</init-param>
</servlet>