How to Externalize properties outside WAR file

[Sarin Kuraganti]

Hi All,

I am trying to externalize the properties outside of a war file as this is an absolute necessity for our application. I found a way in the Spring forum as described below, but that doesn't seem to be working. Can you please let me know how to externalize properties outside of the war file and still refer to those properties in web.xml, applicationContext.xml and XXX-servlet.xml? Thanks in advance for any help or pointers.

I'm using Tomcat 5.5.27 and Spring 2.5

Here's what I've found:

<Context ...>
<!-- Location of the deployment configuration file -->
<Environment name="config/configurationPath"
type="java.lang.String"
value="file:C:\path\to\config.properties" />
...
</Context>

Then in my Spring bean files, I extract the value from JNDI and define and configure the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer as such:

<beans ...>
 
<!-- Import deployment configuration file path from JNDI -->
<bean id="configurationPath"
class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
<property name="jndiName">
<value>java:comp/env/config/configurationPath</value>
</property>
</bean>
 
<!-- Load our substitution properties into a Properties object. -->
<bean id="configurationProperties"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.Propertie sFactoryBean">
<property name="locations">
<ref bean="configurationPath" />
</property>
</bean>
 
<!-- Property configurer for pulling property settings from
applicationContext.properties -->
<bean id="propertyPlaceholderConfigurer"
class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyP laceholderConfigurer">
<property name="properties">
<ref bean="configurationProperties" />
</property>
</bean>
...
</beans>