Using a property field value within ' ' in java?

Question

I have a property file in my project, say config.properties, having a property field project.searchkey. Can I have the value of this field as project.searchkey = 'one','two'?

Will it be considering both the values with the '' sign?

That depends on the software that's reading and using the properties file, and since we don't know what software that is, we cannot tell you. — Jesper, May 16 '18 at 12:07
Depends how you will work with that file, if you will use common [`Properties` and `FileInputStream`](https://stackoverflow.com/a/1318391/4892907) then it should not matter... Btw isnt it faster simply try, then ask? :) — xxxvodnikxxx, May 16 '18 at 12:09

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered May 16 '18 at 12:22

Using java.util.Properties (see API)

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Properties prop = new Properties();
        try {
            prop.load(Main.class.getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("config.properties"));
            String propertyValue = prop.getProperty("project.searchkey");
            System.out.println(propertyValue);
        } catch (IOException ex) {
            ex.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

It prints 'one','two', so it reads everything after the = as a single String

project.searchkey='one','two' returns 'one','two'

project.searchkey=one,two returns one,two

project.searchkey=one, 'two' returns one, 'two'

etc ...

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 16 '18 at 12:32

project.searchkey=one, two, \
                  three, four, \
                  five

Best not to have keys with commas, and hence not needing single quotes. After retrieval of the String value for key "project.searchkey":

String value = bundle.getProperty("project.searchkey");
// value is "one, two, three, four, five"
String[] searchKeys = value.split(",\\s*"); // Split by comma and any whitespace.

Of course single quotes could be removed for value.

Using a property field value within ' ' in java?

2 Answers2