How to assign a value from application.properties to a static variable?

Question

I am using Spring MVC. I have a UserService class annotated with @Service that has a lot of static variables. I would like to instantiate them with values from the application.properties file.

For example in application.properties I have: SVN_URL = http://some.url/repositories

Then in the class there is: @Value("${SVN_URL}") private static String SVN_URL

I get the Instantiation of bean failed; nested exception is java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError

I have also tried @Autowired private static Environment env;

And then: private static String SVN_URL=env.getProperty("SVN_URL");

It gives the same error.

Answer 1

Think about your problem for a second. You don't have to keep any properties from application.properties in static fields. The "workaround" suggested by Patrick is very dirty:

• you have no idea when this static field is modified
• you don't know which thread modifies it's value
• any thread at any time can change value of this static field and you are screwed
• initializing private static field that way has no sense to me

Keep in mind that when you have bean controlled by @Service annotation you delegate its creation to Spring container. Spring controls this bean lifecycle by creating only one bean that is shared across the whole application (of course you can change this behavior, but I refer to a default one here). In this case any static field has no sense - Spring makes sure that there is only one instance of UserService. And you get the error you have described, because static fields initialization happens many processor-cycles before Spring containers starts up. Here you can find more about when static fields are initialized.

Suggestion

It would be much better to do something like this:

@Service
public class UserService {
    private final String svnUrl;

    @Autowired
    public UserService(@Value("${SVN_URL}") String svnUrl) {
        this.svnUrl = svnUrl;
    }
}

This approach is better for a few reasons:

• constructor injection describes directly what values are needed to initialize the object
• final field means that this value wont be changed after it gets initialized in a constructor call (you are thread safe)

Using @ConfigurationProperties

There is also another way to load multiple properties to a single class. It requires using prefix for all values you want to load to your configuration class. Consider following example:

@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = "test")
public class TestProperties {

    private String svnUrl;

    private int somePort;

    // ... getters and setters
}

Spring will handle TestProperties class initialization (it will create a testProperties bean) and you can inject this object to any other bean initialized by Spring container. And here is what exemplary application.properties file look like:

test.svnUrl=https://svn.localhost.com/repo/
test.somePort=8080

Baeldung created a great post on this subject on his blog, I recommend reading it for more information.

Alternative solution

If you need somehow to use values in static context it's better to define some public class with public static final fields inside - those values will be instantiated when classloader loads this class and they wont be modified during application lifetime. The only problem is that you won't be able to load these values from Spring's application.properties file, you will have to maintain them directly in the code (or you could implement some class that loads values for these constants from properties file, but this sounds so verbose to the problem you are trying to solve).

Answer 2

Spring does not allow to inject value into static variables.

A workaround is to create a non static setter to assign your value into the static variable:

@Service
public class UserService {

    private static String SVN_URL;

    @Value("${SVN_URL}")
    public void setSvnUrl(String svnUrl) {
        SVN_URL = svnUrl;
    }

}

Answer 3

Accessing application.properties in static member functions is not allowed but here is a work around,

application.properties

server.ip = 127.0.0.1

PropertiesExtractor.java

public class PropertiesExtractor {
     private static Properties properties;
     static {
        properties = new Properties();
        URL url = new PropertiesExtractor().getClass().getClassLoader().getResource("application.properties");
        try{
            properties.load(new FileInputStream(url.getPath()));
           } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
           }
        }

        public static String getProperty(String key){
            return properties.getProperty(key);
        }
}

Main.class

public class Main {
    private static PropertiesExtractor propertiesExtractor;
    static{
         try {
             propertiesExtractor = new PropertiesExtractor();
         } catch (UnknownHostException e) {
               e.printStackTrace();
           }
    }

    public static getServerIP(){
        System.out.println(propertiesExtractor.getProperty("server.ip")
    }
}

Answer 4

static String profile;

@Value("${spring.profiles.active:Unknown}")
private void activeProfile(String newprofile) {
    profile = newprofile;
};

Answer 5

In order to gain static access to Spring Boot properties you can create a Properties Holder Component which implements the Command Line Runner interface. The command line runner interface executes run() upon component instantiation by Spring Boot.

Since we have autowired access to our properties object in the PropertiesHolder component, it is possible to assign the autowired properties to a static Properties class variable upon CommandLineRunner execution of the run() method.

At this point any class can statically call PropertiesHolder.getProperties() to access the contents of Spring Boot properties values.

PropertiesHolder.class:

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.CommandLineRunner;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class PropertiesHolder implements CommandLineRunner {

    //Spring Boot Autowired Properties Object
    @Autowired MyProperties myAutowiredProperties;

    //Statically assigned Properties Object
    private static MyProperties properties;

    //Hide constructor (optional)
    private PropertiesHolder(){}

    public static MyProperties getProperties() throws NullPointerException{
        if(PropertiesHolder.properties == null)
            throw new NullPointerException("Properites have not been initialized by Spring Application before call.");

        return PropertiesHolder.properties;
    }

    //Use to assign autowired properties to statically allocated properties
    public static void makeAvailable(MyProperties myAutowiredProperties){
        PropertiesHolder.properties = myAutowiredProperties;
    }

    //Spring Boot command line runner autoexecuted upon component creation
    //which initializes the static properties access
    public void run(String... args) {
        PropertiesHolder.makeAvailable(myAutowiredProperties);
    }
}

MyProperties.class

import lombok.Data;
import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.ConfigurationProperties;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

//Example: your_properties_file_prefix.properties 
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = "YOUR_PROPERTIES_FILE_PREFIX") 
@Component
@Data
public class MyProperties {

    private String property1;
    private String property2;
    private String property3;
}

Answer 6

At least one more simple solution with configuration file:

@Configuration
public class YourStaticPropertyConfiuration {
  public static String PROPERTY_NAME;

  @Value("${propertyName}")
  public void setProperty(final String propertyName) {
    PROPERTY_NAME = propertyName;
  }
}

Use PROPERTY_NAME anywhere as static variable

Answer 7

For all those who, for whatever reason, want to provide setting properties imported from files as static properties, here is a solution that is as simple and safe as possible.

The Problem:

Spring Boot unfortunately doesn't provide a simple way to import properties from a file and bind them as static properties to a class. One possible solution to achieve that anyway would be to set the static properties using `@Value` annotations like this:

public class GlobalProperties {

    public static String NAME;

    @Value("${configs.boss.name}")
    public void setName(String name) {
        NAME = name;
    }
}

However, this approach would mean that the static properties cannot be declared as final.
And we certainly don't want that.

The Solution:

application.yml:

configs:
  boss:
    name: "Leeloo Multipass"

ConfigProperties.java:

@Validated
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = "configs")
public record ConfigProperties(@NotNull Boss boss) {

    public static final String BOSS_NAME = BOSS.NAME;

    private static class Boss {

        private static String NAME;

        public Boss(String name) {
            NAME = name;
        }
    }
}

The solution is based on the assumption that Spring Boot builds the configuration objects first, and the properties' configuration objects first of all. So at the time Spring Boot adds the prepared objects as Bean to the context, the nested classes are already setup and the static properties initialization of ConfigProperties can access the static properties of the nested classes (which still are not final, but also not accessible from outside). This way it is possible to provide all properties declared as static final. Unless Spring Boot doesn't decide to change its internal initialization process, everything is cream & cookie.

This approach was tested with Spring Boot 3 and Java 17. It is of course possible to provide the properties additionally via the configs-bean. For that, the properties of the nested classes must be explicitly specified and their corresponding getters must be implemented. In this case, some simplification can be achieved by using records instead of classes.