I recently ran into the issue of how to register custom property sources in the environment. My specific problem is that I have a library with a Spring configuration that I want to be imported into the Spring application context, and it requires custom property sources. However, I don't necessarily have control over all of the places where the application context is created. Because of this, I do not want to use the recommended mechanisms of ApplicationContextInitializer or register-before-refresh in order to register the custom property sources.
What I found really frustrating is that using the old PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer, it was easy to subclass and customize the configurers completely within the Spring configuration. In contrast, to customize property sources, we are told that we have to do it not in the Spring configuration itself, but before the application context is initialized.
After some research and trial and error, I discovered that it is possible to register custom property sources from inside of the Spring configuration, but you have to be careful how you do it. The sources need to be registered before any PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurers execute in the context. You can do this by making the source registration a BeanFactoryPostProcessor with PriorityOrdered and an order that is higher precedence than the PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer that uses the sources.
I wrote this class, which does the job:
package example;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Properties;
import org.springframework.beans.BeansException;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanInitializationException;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanFactoryPostProcessor;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.config.ConfigurableListableBeanFactory;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextAware;
import org.springframework.core.Ordered;
import org.springframework.core.PriorityOrdered;
import org.springframework.core.env.ConfigurableEnvironment;
import org.springframework.core.env.Environment;
import org.springframework.core.env.MutablePropertySources;
import org.springframework.core.env.PropertiesPropertySource;
import org.springframework.core.env.PropertySource;
import org.springframework.core.io.support.PropertiesLoaderSupport;
/**
* This is an abstract base class that can be extended by any class that wishes
* to become a custom property source in the Spring context.
* <p>
* This extends from the standard Spring class PropertiesLoaderSupport, which
* contains properties that specify property resource locations, plus methods
* for loading properties from specified resources. These are all available to
* be used from the Spring configuration, and by subclasses of this class.
* <p>
* This also implements a number of Spring flag interfaces, all of which are
* required to maneuver instances of this class into a position where they can
* register their property sources BEFORE PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer
* executes to substitute variables in the Spring configuration:
* <ul>
* <li>BeanFactoryPostProcessor - Guarantees that this bean will be instantiated
* before other beans in the context. It also puts it in the same phase as
* PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer, which is also a BFPP. The
* postProcessBeanFactory method is used to register the property source.</li>
* <li>PriorityOrdered - Allows the bean priority to be specified relative to
* PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer so that this bean can be executed first.
* </li>
* <li>ApplicationContextAware - Provides access to the application context and
* its environment so that the created property source can be registered.</li>
* </ul>
* <p>
* The Spring configuration for subclasses should contain the following
* properties:
* <ul>
* <li>propertySourceName - The name of the property source this will register.</li>
* <li>location(s) - The location from which properties will be loaded.</li>
* <li>addBeforeSourceName (optional) - If specified, the resulting property
* source will be added before the given property source name, and will
* therefore take precedence.</li>
* <li>order (optional) - The order in which this source should be executed
* relative to other BeanFactoryPostProcessors. This should be used in
* conjunction with addBeforeName so that if property source factory "psfa"
* needs to register its property source before the one from "psfb", "psfa"
* executes AFTER "psfb".
* </ul>
*
* @author rjsmith2
*
*/
public abstract class AbstractPropertySourceFactory extends
PropertiesLoaderSupport implements ApplicationContextAware,
PriorityOrdered, BeanFactoryPostProcessor {
// Default order will be barely higher than the default for
// PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer.
private int order = Ordered.LOWEST_PRECEDENCE - 1;
private String propertySourceName;
private String addBeforeSourceName;
private ApplicationContext applicationContext;
private MutablePropertySources getPropertySources() {
final Environment env = applicationContext.getEnvironment();
if (!(env instanceof ConfigurableEnvironment)) {
throw new IllegalStateException(
"Cannot get environment for Spring application context");
}
return ((ConfigurableEnvironment) env).getPropertySources();
}
public int getOrder() {
return order;
}
public void setOrder(int order) {
this.order = order;
}
public String getPropertySourceName() {
return propertySourceName;
}
public void setPropertySourceName(String propertySourceName) {
this.propertySourceName = propertySourceName;
}
public String getAddBeforeSourceName() {
return addBeforeSourceName;
}
public void setAddBeforeSourceName(String addBeforeSourceName) {
this.addBeforeSourceName = addBeforeSourceName;
}
public void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext applicationContext) {
this.applicationContext = applicationContext;
}
/**
* Subclasses can override this method to perform adjustments on the
* properties after they are read.
* <p>
* This should be done by getting, adding, removing, and updating properties
* as needed.
*
* @param props
* properties to adjust
*/
protected void convertProperties(Properties props) {
// Override in subclass to perform conversions.
}
/**
* Creates a property source from the specified locations.
*
* @return PropertiesPropertySource instance containing the read properties
* @throws IOException
* if properties cannot be read
*/
protected PropertySource<?> createPropertySource() throws IOException {
if (propertySourceName == null) {
throw new IllegalStateException("No property source name specified");
}
// Load the properties file (or files) from specified locations.
final Properties props = new Properties();
loadProperties(props);
// Convert properties as required.
convertProperties(props);
// Convert to property source.
final PropertiesPropertySource source = new PropertiesPropertySource(
propertySourceName, props);
return source;
}
@Override
public void postProcessBeanFactory(
ConfigurableListableBeanFactory beanFactory) throws BeansException {
try {
// Create the property source, and get its desired position in
// the list of sources.
if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
logger.debug("Creating property source [" + propertySourceName
+ "]");
}
final PropertySource<?> source = createPropertySource();
// Register the property source.
final MutablePropertySources sources = getPropertySources();
if (addBeforeSourceName != null) {
if (sources.contains(addBeforeSourceName)) {
if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
logger.debug("Adding property source ["
+ propertySourceName + "] before ["
+ addBeforeSourceName + "]");
}
sources.addBefore(addBeforeSourceName, source);
} else {
logger.warn("Property source [" + propertySourceName
+ "] cannot be added before non-existent source ["
+ addBeforeSourceName + "] - adding at the end");
sources.addLast(source);
}
} else {
if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
logger.debug("Adding property source ["
+ propertySourceName + "] at the end");
}
sources.addLast(source);
}
} catch (Exception e) {
throw new BeanInitializationException(
"Failed to register property source", e);
}
}
}
Of note here is that the default order of this property source factory class is higher precedence than the default order of PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer.
Also, the registration of the property source happens in postProcessBeanFactory, which means that it will execute in the correct order relative to the PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer. I discovered the hard way that InitializingBean and afterPropertiesSet do not respect the order parameter, and I gave up on that approach as being wrong and redundant.
Finally, because this is a BeanFactoryPostProcessor, it is a bad idea to try to wire much in the way of dependencies. Therefore, the class accesses the environment directly through the application context, which it obtains using ApplicationContextAware.
In my case, I needed the property source to decrypt password properties, which I implemented using the following subclass:
package example;
import java.util.Properties;
/**
* This is a property source factory that creates a property source that can
* process properties for substituting into a Spring configuration.
* <p>
* The only thing that distinguishes this from a normal Spring property source
* is that it decrypts encrypted passwords.
*
* @author rjsmith2
*
*/
public class PasswordPropertySourceFactory extends
AbstractPropertySourceFactory {
private static final PasswordHelper passwordHelper = new PasswordHelper();
private String[] passwordProperties;
public String[] getPasswordProperties() {
return passwordProperties;
}
public void setPasswordProperties(String[] passwordProperties) {
this.passwordProperties = passwordProperties;
}
public void setPasswordProperty(String passwordProperty) {
this.passwordProperties = new String[] { passwordProperty };
}
@Override
protected void convertProperties(Properties props) {
// Adjust password fields by decrypting them.
if (passwordProperties != null) {
for (String propName : passwordProperties) {
final String propValue = props.getProperty(propName);
if (propValue != null) {
final String plaintext = passwordHelper
.decryptString(propValue);
props.setProperty(propName, plaintext);
}
}
}
}
}
Finally, I specifed the property source factory in my Spring configuration:
<!-- Enable property resolution via PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer.
The order has to be larger than the ones used by custom property sources
so that those property sources are registered before any placeholders
are substituted. -->
<context:property-placeholder order="1000" ignore-unresolvable="true" />
<!-- Register a custom property source that reads DB properties, and
decrypts the database password. -->
<bean class="example.PasswordPropertySourceFactory">
<property name="propertySourceName" value="DBPropertySource" />
<property name="location" value="classpath:db.properties" />
<property name="passwordProperty" value="db.password" />
<property name="ignoreResourceNotFound" value="true" />
<!-- Order must be lower than on property-placeholder element. -->
<property name="order" value="100" />
</bean>
To be honest, with the defaults for order in PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer and AbstractPropertySourceFactory, it is probably not even necessary to specify order in the Spring configuration.
Nonetheless, this works, and it does not require any fiddling with the application context initialization.
