Tomcat Not reading Spring-Boot Application Properties

Question

I'm fairly new to spring/java and have been checking out spring-boot for a project I have at work. I've been following guides and finally have a (semi) working web app MVC + JPA for data access. Everything works when I deploy the app via the Jar method :

java -jar build/libs/client.jar

However, our application is eventually going to be deployed to Tomcat (v7.0.40) so I need to create a war file from the project. I've followed the converting jars to war's guide on the spring.io site and have run into a problem. It appears that it is not loading up the application.properties file. Here are the important code snippets:

src/main/java/hello/GreetingController:

@Controller
@Configuration
public class GreetingController {
    @Value("${app.username}")
    private String username;

    @RequestMapping("/greeting")
    public String greeting(@RequestParam(value="name", required=false, defaultValue="World") String name, Model model) {
        model.addAttribute("name", name);
        model.addAttribute("username", username);
        return "greeting";
    }
}

src/main/java/hello/Application.java

@ComponentScan
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public class Application {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
    }
}

src/main/java/hello/HelloWebXml.java

public class HelloWebXml extends SpringBootServletInitializer {

    @Override
    protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder application) {
        return application.sources(Application.class);
    }
}

src/main/resources/application.properties

app.username=foo

for completeness, here is the build.gradle:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/libs-snapshot" }
        mavenLocal()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:0.5.0.M6")
    }
}

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'eclipse-wtp'
apply plugin: 'idea'
apply plugin: 'spring-boot'
apply plugin: 'war'

war {
    baseName = 'client'
    version =  '0.1.0'
}

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
    maven { url "http://repo.spring.io/libs-snapshot" }
}

dependencies {
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:0.5.0.M6")
    compile("org.thymeleaf:thymeleaf-spring3:2.0.16")
    testCompile("junit:junit:4.11")
}

task wrapper(type: Wrapper) {
    gradleVersion = '1.8'
}

I build the application:

gradle clean build

Drop the war in tomcat, and then tail out the logs and see the following:

SEVERE: ContainerBase.addChild: start:
org.apache.catalina.LifecycleException: Failed to start component [StandardEngine[Catalina]
.StandardHost[localhost].StandardContext[/client]]
...
...
...
Caused by: org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating the bean
with name 'greetingController': Injection of autowired dependencies failed; nested exception
is java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Could not resolve placeholder 'app.username' in string
value "${app.username}"
...
...
...

As I said, it works when I run it via a jar, but does not work when I deploy it to Tomcat. I also looked inside $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/client/WEB-INF/classes and I see the application.properties file. So I think that it should be on the classpath. My question is, why isn't tomcat loading it? I've tried searching all over and no one else seems to be having this problem so I'm not sure if its just something I have incorrectly configured, or what.

Thanks in advance.

Spring boot should load application.properties by default. Try adding @PropertySource("application.properties") to your @Configuration class to see if it actually finds it. — Sotirios Delimanolis
Hey @SotiriosDelimanolis thanks for the response. Unfortunately, this did not work either. I got a FileNotFoundException when tomcat tried to load up the war. I can give you more details if necessary, just let me know. — loganasherjones
Sorry, it should actually be classpath:application.properties — Sotirios Delimanolis
Thanks again, I went ahead and added that, but noticed a compiler warning: Cannot find annotation method 'value()' in type 'Repeatable': class file for java.lang.annotation.Repeatable not found. When I dropped it in tomcat, I got: Failed to load bean class: hello.Application; nested exception is org.springframework.core.NestedIOException: Unable to collect imports; nested exception is java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: java.lang.annotation.Repeatable — loganasherjones
@SotiriosDelimanolis the @PropertySource annotation can be used with a Spring Boot application but you don't need to declare it if it is classpath:application.properties (and there are some framework features that can't be configured with @PropertySource) - not relevant here though. — Dave Syer

codecraig codecraig · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-19T13:33:45

follow this guys advice: http://blog.codeleak.pl/2013/11/how-to-propertysource-annotations-in.html

try:

@PropertySources(value = {@PropertySource("classpath:application.properties")})

then boom sauce for the win.

Tomcat Not reading Spring-Boot Application Properties

4 Answers