Setting active profile and config location from command line in spring boot

I have a spring boot application.

I have three profiles in my application-> development, staging and production. So I have 3 files

1. application-development.yml
2. application-staging.yml
3. application-production.yml

My application.yml resides inside src/main/resources. I have set the active profile in application.yml as :

spring:
  profiles.active: development

The other 3 profile specific config files are present in C:\config folder.

I am using gradle plugin for eclipse. When I try to do a "bootRun", I am setting the command line arguments in my gradle configuration in eclipse as

 -Dspring.profiles.active=staging -Dspring.config.location=C:\Config

However, the command line property is not getting reflected and my active profile is always getting set as development(which is the one that I have mentioned in the applications.yml file). Also C:\Config folder is not searched for profile specific config files.

I think I am missing something here. I have been trying to figure it out for the past 2 days. But no luck. I would really appreciate any help.

There are two different ways you can add/override spring properties on the command line.

Option 1: Java System Properties (VM Arguments)

It's important that the -D parameters are before your application.jar otherwise they are not recognized.

java -jar -Dspring.profiles.active=prod application.jar

Option 2: Program arguments

java -jar application.jar --spring.profiles.active=prod --spring.config.location=c:\config

My best practice is to define this as a VM "-D" argument. Please note the differences between spring boot 1.x and 2.x.

The profiles to enable can be specified on the command line:

Spring-Boot 2.x (works only with maven)

-Dspring-boot.run.profiles=local

Spring-Boot 1.x

-Dspring.profiles.active=local

example usage with maven:

Spring-Boot 2.x

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.profiles=local

Spring-Boot 1.x and 2.x

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring.profiles.active=local

Make sure to separate them with a comma for multiple profiles:

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

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

-Dspring.profiles.active=staging -Dspring.config.location=C:\Config

is not correct.

should be:

--spring.profiles.active=staging --spring.config.location=C:\Config

There's another way by setting the OS environment variable, SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE.

for eg :

SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=dev gradle clean bootRun

Reference : How to set active Spring profiles

I had to add this:

bootRun {
	String activeProfile =  System.properties['spring.profiles.active']
	String confLoc = System.properties['spring.config.location']
	systemProperty "spring.profiles.active", activeProfile
	systemProperty "spring.config.location", "file:$confLoc"
}

And now bootRun picks up the profile and config locations.

Thanks a lot @jst for the pointer.

you can use the following command line:

java -jar -Dspring.profiles.active=[yourProfileName] target/[yourJar].jar

When setting the profile via the Maven plugin you must do it via run.jvmArguments

mvn spring-boot:run -Drun.jvmArguments="-Dspring.profiles.active=production"

With debug option:

mvn spring-boot:run -Drun.jvmArguments="-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=5005 -Dspring.profiles.active=jpa"

I've seen this trip a lot of people up..hope it helps

I think your problem is likely related to your spring.config.location not ending the path with "/".

Quote the docs

> If spring.config.location contains directories (as opposed to files) they should end in / (and will be appended with the names generated from spring.config.name before being loaded).

http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/htmlsingle/#boot-features-external-config-application-property-files

Michael Yin's answer is correct but a better explanation seems to be required!

A lot of you mentioned that -D is the correct way to specify JVM parameters and you are absolutely right. But Michael is also right as mentioned in Spring Boot Profiles documentation.

What is not clear in the documentation, is what kind of parameter it is: --spring.profiles.active is a not a standard JVM parameter so if you want to use it in your IDE fill the correct fields (i.e. program arguments)

For me helped to add "/" at the end of profiles location.

java -jar myjar.jar --spring.config.additional-location=env/ --spring.profiles.active=prod

If you use Gradle:

-Pspring.profiles.active=local

We want to automatically pick property file based upon mentioned the profile name in spring.profiles.active and the path in -Dspring.config.location

application-dev.properties

If we are running jar in Unix OS then we have to use / at the end of -Dspring.config.location otherwise it will give below error.

> Error :: java.lang.IllegalStateException: File extension of config file location 'file:/home/xyz/projectName/cfg' is not known to any PropertySourceLoader. If the location is meant to reference a directory, it must end in '/'

Example

java -Dspring.profiles.active=dev -Dspring.config.location=/home/xyz/projectName/cfg/ -jar /home/xyz/project/abc.jar

or

java -jar /home/xyz/project/abc.jar --spring.profiles.active=dev --spring.config.location=/home/xyz/projectName/cfg/

A way that i do this on intellij is setting an environment variable on the command like so:

In this case i am setting the profile to test

I was facing similar issues to run tests with different profiles in command line in springboot. I fixed that by first setting the profile and then running the test command like below :

Step 1 : export SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=test(for mac/linux) or SET SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=test(for windows)

Step2 : ./gradlew test --tests "com.maersk.snd.integrationtest.IntegrationTestPOC"

Above commands can be clubbed together like below :

export SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=test && ./gradlew test --tests "com.maersk.snd.integrationtest.IntegrationTestPOC"

Just as an addon, if you have a property mentioned in your application.properties file and you need to override that property from another config file you can use below property spring.config.additional-location (with -D since you pass from command line) We used to use this because we have one application.properties inside the jar and one external one in each of our servers' config folders, which is used to override any server specific properties.