How do I activate a Spring Boot profile when running from IntelliJ?

181
votes

I have 5 environments:

 - local (my development machine)
 - dev
 - qc
 - uat
 - live
 - staging

I want different application properties to be used for each environment, so I have the following properties files each which have a different URL for the datasource:

 - application.properties  (containing common properties)
 - application-local.properties
 - application-dev.properties
 - application-qc.properties
 - application-uat.properties
 - application-live.properties

I am using IntelliJ and running my app using bootRun in the Gradle plugin on my local machine. I will be using deploying the same application war file on all other environments which run Tomcat.

I have tried adding:

--spring.profiles.active=local

to the run configuration under script parameters.

I have tried adding

-Dspring.profiles.active=local

to the run configuration under VM options.

Neither work. I keep seeing the INFO message on startup say: No active profile set, falling back to default profiles: default

If I run my app from the windows command line using 

gradle bootRun

but I first set the environment variable 

set SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=local

Then everything works.

So my question is, how do I activate my local spring boot profile when running bootRun from IntelliJ ?

13
springintellij-ideagradlespring-boot
Why are you running the application via gradle there? Wouldn't it be 10 times more convenient to use the run configuration? There's a field where you can set the profiles to enable... – Stephane Nicoll
I am using the run configuration in IntelliJ, as explained above. It's not working. – dleerob
No you're not. What I am talking about is the "Spring Boot run configuration" Run -> Edit configuration > New > Spring Boot. – Stephane Nicoll
Aah yes, I moved away from Spring Boot run configuration as I needed to expand project.properties into application.properties in my build.gradle and if I used the Spring Boot run configuration, it didn't seem to work. I'll look into resolving that issue and then perhaps I can simply use the active profile field as you suggested – dleerob
Using the Spring Boot configuration seems more trouble than its worth. The 'Make' simply copies across the resources and doesn't filter/alter them as per by build script. Then telling it to run the 'build' from gradle instead of 'make' simply causes the run to freeze. If I use bootRun instead, along with my environment entry as per below answer, all works fine. – dleerob

13 Answers

287
votes

I added -Dspring.profiles.active=test to VM Options and then re-ran that configuration. It worked perfectly.

This can be set by

  • Choosing Run | Edit Configurations...
  • Go to the Configuration tab
  • Expand the Environment section to reveal VM options
105
votes

If you actually make use of spring boot run configurations (currently only supported in the Ultimate Edition) it's easy to pre-configure the profiles in "Active Profiles" setting.

enter image description here

23
votes

Spring Boot seems had changed the way of reading the VM options as it evolves. Here's some way to try when you launch an application in Intellij and want to active some profile:

1. Change VM options

Open "Edit configuration" in "Run", and in "VM options", add: -Dspring.profiles.active=local

It actually works with one project of mine with Spring Boot v2.0.3.RELEASE and Spring v5.0.7.RELEASE, but not with another project with Spring Boot v2.1.1.RELEASE and Spring v5.1.3.RELEASE.

Also, when running with Maven or JAR, people mentioned this:

mvn spring-boot:run -Drun.profiles=dev

or 

java -jar -Dspring.profiles.active=dev XXX.jar

(See here: how to use Spring Boot profiles)

2. Passing JVM args

It is mentioned somewhere, that Spring changes the way of launching the process of applications if you specify some JVM options; it forks another process and will not pass the arg it received so this does not work. The only way to pass args to it, is:

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.jvmArguments="..."

Again, this is for Maven. https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/maven-plugin/examples/run-debug.html

3. Setting (application) env var

What works for me for the second project, was setting the environment variable, as mentioned in some answer above: "Edit configuration" - "Environment variable", and:

SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=local
15
votes

Try add this command in your build.gradle

enter image description here

So for running configure that shape:

enter image description here

9
votes

I ended up adding the following to my build.gradle:

bootRun {
  environment SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE: environment.SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE ?: "local"
}

test {
  environment SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE: environment.SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE ?: "test"
}

So now when running bootRun from IntelliJ, it defaults to the "local" profile.

On our other environments, we will simply set the 'SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE' environment variable in Tomcat.

I got this from a comment found here: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/pull/592

9
votes

For Spring Boot 2.1.0 and later you can use

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.profiles=foo,bar

6
votes

A probable cause could be that you do not pass the command line parameters into the applications main method. I made the same mistake some weeks ago.

public static final void main(String... args) {
    SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}
3
votes

I use the Intellij Community Edition. Go to the "Run/Debug Configurations" > Runner tab > Environment variables > click button "...". Add: SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE = local

spring.profiles.active

2
votes

In my case I used below configuration at VM options in IntelliJ , it was not picking the local configurations but after a restart of IntelliJ it picked configuration details from IntelliJ and service started running.

-Dspring.profiles.active=local
0
votes

Try this. Edit your build.gradle file as followed.

ext { profile = project.hasProperty('profile') ? project['profile'] : 'local' }
0
votes

Replace your profile name with BE

You can try the above way to activate a profile

0
votes

So for resuming...

If you have the IntelliJ Ultimate the correct answer is the one provided by Daniel Bubenheim

But if you don't, create in Run->Edit Configurations and in Configuration tab add the next Environment variable:

SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=profilename

And to execute the jar do:

java -jar -Dspring.profiles.active=profilename XXX.jar
-4
votes

Set -Dspring.profiles.active=local under program arguments.