PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer deprecated

1. Overview

In this article, we will learn the alternative to deprecated PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer.

It is deprecated as of 5.2 and recommended to use PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer instead which is more flexible through taking advantage of the Environment and PropertySource mechanisms.

2. PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer alternative

PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer is more flexible by taking advantage of the Environment and PropertySource mechanisms.

PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer is still appropriate for use when:

1. the spring-context module is not available (Application using the BeanFactory API instead of the ApplicationContext). To know the differences between BeanFactory and ApplicationContext, see this article.
2. Existing configuration makes use of the systemPropertiesMode, systemPropertiesModeName properties. We encourage users to avoid using these settings, and rather configure property source search order through the container’s Environment.

PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer is designed as a general replacement for PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer in Spring 3.1 applications. The spring-context-3.1 library uses PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer as the default property placeholder.

2.1. PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer Example

For example, the PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer uses the rabbitmq.properties as property source and overrides the local properties.

@Bean(name = "propertySourcesConfigurer")
public static PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer configurer() {
    PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer ppc = new PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer();
    ppc.setLocation(new ClassPathResource("rabbitmq.properties"));
    ppc.setLocalOverride(true);
    ppc.setProperties(ApplicationProperties.getProperties());
    return ppc;
}

3. Conclusion

To sum up, we have learned the alternative to the deprecated PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer.