Profiles Example: Switching a Whole Set of Properties at Once

One flag switches every setting a production file defines, not just one of them.

A profile is a named set of properties that only takes effect when you activate it. application-prod.properties sits beside application.properties and contributes nothing at all until the prod profile is active.

The base file and the production file each set the same property:

application.propertiestext

app.greeting=hello from application.properties

application-prod.propertiestext

app.greeting=hello from application-prod.properties

Running the same jar without a profile, and then with --spring.profiles.active=prod:

text

java -jar app.jar
app.greeting = hello from application.properties

java -jar app.jar --spring.profiles.active=prod
app.greeting = hello from application-prod.properties

run in a container: activating the profile is enough, and nothing in the code changed

One flag switched every property application-prod.properties sets, not only this one. In a real application the production file would hold the database address, the logging level and the cache sizes, and all of them change together.

So a profile groups everything one environment needs behind one name. The profile can also be activated with the environment variable SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=prod, which is how most deployment platforms set it. Several profiles can be active at once, separated by commas, and where two profile files disagree the profile listed last wins.

Spring Boot

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