Spring Boot: How do you specify an environment variable that has dashes in the application.properties?

I have an `application.properties` file that looks like this:

mcl.sso.frontend-url=http://blah.com:9001
mcl.sso.mocking-agent=false

I am trying to override these two variables from the command line. This should be possible by setting environment variables. Here's how I'm running the command:

MCL_SSO_FRONTEND_URL='foobar' MCL_SSO_MOCKING_AGENT='true' ./gradlew run

However, when I print out the values of these variables, `mcl.sso.mocking-agent` equals "true" (as expected), but `mcl.sso.frontend-url` still equals "http://blah.com:9001" (unexpected). Why doesn't `mcl.sso.frontend-url` change the value of the property? I can only assume this has something to do with the way Spring converts environment variables into property keys, but I can't find any specific documentation on this.

This has been fixed as of Spring Boot `1.2.5`. Previously, you'd have to use `MCL_SSO_FRONTEND-URL` (notice the dash that can't be translated to an underscore).

You can play with bindings using [this sample project](

[To see links please register here]

).

Just get rid of the dash:

mcl.sso.mocking-agent > MCL_SSO_MOCKINGAGENT

From [spring-boot documentation][1]:

Binding from Environment Variables
----------------------------------

Most operating systems impose strict rules around the names that can be used for environment variables. For example, Linux shell variables can contain only letters (`a` to `z` or `A` to `Z`), numbers (`0` to `9`) or the underscore character (`_`). By convention, Unix shell variables will also have their names in UPPERCASE.

Spring Boot’s relaxed binding rules are, as much as possible, designed to be compatible with these naming restrictions.

To convert a property name in the canonical-form to an environment variable name you can follow these rules:

- Replace dots (`.`) with underscores (`_`).
- Remove any dashes (`-`).
- Convert to uppercase.

For example, the configuration property `spring.main.log-startup-info` would be an environment variable named `SPRING_MAIN_LOGSTARTUPINFO`.

Environment variables can also be used when binding to object lists. To bind to a `List`, the element number should be surrounded with underscores in the variable name.

For example, the configuration property `my.service[0].other` would use an environment variable named `MY_SERVICE_0_OTHER`.


[1]:

[To see links please register here]