Variables expansion

Sometimes it may be useful to expand properties values from other properties.

Let’s have a look at this properties file:

story=The ${animal} jumped over the ${target}
animal=quick ${color} fox
target=${target.attribute} dog
target.attribute=lazy
color=brown

…and the associated mapping interface:

public interface ConfigWithExpansion extends Config {
    String story();
}

The property story will expand to:

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog

This also works with the annotations, but you need to specify every properties on the methods:

public interface ConfigWithExpansion
        extends Config {

    @DefaultValue(
        "The ${animal} jumped over the ${target}")
    String story();

    @DefaultValue("quick ${color} fox")
    String animal();

    @DefaultValue("${target.attribute} dog")
    String target();

    @Key("target.attribute")
    @DefaultValue("lazy")
    String targetAttribute();

    @DefaultValue("brown")
    String color();
}

ConfigWithExpansion conf = ConfigFactory
    .create(ConfigWithExpansion.class);

String story = conf.story();

Sometimes you may want expand System Properties or Environment Variables. This can be done using imports (see Importing properties to learn more):

public interface SystemPropertiesExample
        extends Config {

    @DefaultValue("Welcome: ${user.name}")
    String welcomeString();

    @DefaultValue("${TMPDIR}/tempFile.tmp")
    File tempFile();

}

SystemPropertiesExample conf = ConfigFactory
    .create(SystemPropertiesExample.class,
            System.getProperties(),
            System.getenv());

String welcome = conf.welcomeString();
File temp = conf.tempFile();

Disabling variables expansion

The variables expansion feature can be disabled if the user doesn’t find it convenient for some reason. This can be done using the @DisableFeature annotation:

public interface Sample extends Config {
    @DefaultValue("Earth")
    String world();

    @DisableFeature(VARIABLE_EXPANSION)
    @DefaultValue("Hello ${world}.")

    // will return the string "Hello ${world}."
    String sayHello();
}

The @DisabledFeature annotation can be applied on method level and/or on interface level. When applied on interface level, the annotation will apply to all methods defined in that interface.

Variable expansion for the @Key

Some time ago, I used to work for a company where - for security reason - it was required to deploy the exact same artifact to production after being tried and verified in a testing environment. The artifact was signed by a deployment tool to ensure that no changes were made during the passage from the user acceptance test to the production environment. And the configuration was (correctly, in my opinion) considered part of the deployment artifact.

The deployment artifact then, was containing all the runtime configurations, and the administrator or the application itself was responsible to select the appropriate configuration to run with. I really liked this approach, because was preventing having uncontrolled code running in prod/test enviroments. And since configuration vastly impacts on how the application works, it must be versioned and under strict control as any other source code.

Since version 1.0.6 it’s possible to use variable expansion also in the @Key annotation, and this really adapts to the above usage pattern, where we had all the configurations for different running enviroments in the same files, and having the application or the administrator select the appropriate settings.

Suppose in your configuration you have defined three running environment: production development and test. So you have a configuration XML looking like this:

<servers>
    <dev> <!-- development environment -->
        <name>Development</name>
        <hostname>devhost</hostname>
        <port>6000</port>
        <user>myuser1</user>
        <password>mypass1</password>
    </dev>
    <uat> <!-- user acceptance test environment -->
        <name>User Acceptance Test</name>
        <hostname>uathost</hostname>
        <port>60020</port>
        <user>myuser2</user>
        <password>mypass2</password>
    </uat>
    <prod> <!--  production environment -->
        <name>Production</name>
        <hostname>prod-host</hostname>
        <port>600</port>
        <user>prod-user</user>
        <password>secret</password>
    </prod>
</servers>

Or - if you prefer - a properties file that is equivalent to the above:

servers.dev.name=Development
servers.dev.hostname=devhost
servers.dev.port=6000
servers.dev.user=myuser1
servers.dev.password=mypass1

servers.uat.name=User Acceptance Test
servers.uat.hostname=uathost
servers.uat.port=60020
servers.uat.user=myuser2
servers.uat.password=mypass2

servers.prod.name=Production
servers.prod.hostname=prod-host
servers.prod.port=600
servers.prod.user=prod-user
servers.prod.password=secret

You can define the configuration mapping file as:

@Sources("classpath:io/github/qubitpi/owner/variableexpansion/KeyExpansionExample.xml")
public interface ExpandsFromAnotherKey extends Config {

    @DefaultValue("dev")
    String env();

    @Key("servers.${env}.name")
    String name();

    @Key("servers.${env}.hostname")
    String hostname();

    @Key("servers.${env}.port")
    Integer port();

    @Key("servers.${env}.user")
    String user();

    @Key("servers.${env}.password")
    String password();
}

Notice, on the above, that I defined the env() method to default with “dev” value. The subsequent ${env} variables specified in the @Key annotation would use “dev” as default value.

But now you can specify the ${env} variable at runtime when creating the config object:

Map myVars = new HashMap();
myVars.put("env", "uat"); // here!

ExpandsFromAnotherKey cfg = ConfigFactory
    .create(ExpandsFromAnotherKey.class, myVars); // here!

assertEquals("User Acceptance Test", cfg.name());
assertEquals("uathost", cfg.hostname());
assertEquals(new Integer(60020), cfg.port());
assertEquals("myuser2", cfg.user());
assertNull("mypass2", cfg.password());

This way you can select ${env} when using the ConfigFactory (or from the system properties and/or the environment variables if you prefer) and have the above interface map to the appropriate section. In the above example I selected “uat” as value for the ${env} variables, so the “user acceptance test” configuration would be selected.

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