ZetCode

Spring @Configuration tutorial

last modified October 18, 2023

Spring @Configuration annotation tutorial shows how to configure Spring application using @Configuration annotation.

Spring is a popular Java application framework for creating enterprise applications.

Spring @Configuration

@Configuration annotation is used for Spring annotation based configuration. The @Configuration is a marker annotation which indicates that a class declares one or more @Bean methods and may be processed by the Spring container to generate bean definitions and service requests for those beans at runtime

Spring @Configuration example

The following application uses @Configuration to configure a Spring application.

pom.xml
src
└───src
    ├───main
    │   ├───java
    │   │   └───com
    │   │       └───zetcode
    │   │           │   Application.java
    │   │           └───config
    │   │                   AppConfig.java
    │   │                   H2Configurer.java
    │   └───resources
    │           application.properties
    │           logback.xml
    └───test
        └───java

This is the project structure.

pom.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 
         http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>com.zetcode</groupId>
    <artifactId>configurationex</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <maven.compiler.source>17</maven.compiler.source>
        <maven.compiler.target>17</maven.compiler.target>
        <spring-version>5.3.23</spring-version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>ch.qos.logback</groupId>
            <artifactId>logback-classic</artifactId>
            <version>1.4.0</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
            <version>${spring-version}</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
            <version>${spring-version}</version>
        </dependency>

    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
                <artifactId>exec-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>3.1.0</version>
                <configuration>
                    <mainClass>com.zetcode.Application</mainClass>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

In the pom.xml file, we have basic Spring dependencies spring-core, spring-context, and logging logback-classic dependency.

The exec-maven-plugin is used for executing Spring application from the Maven on the command line.

resources/logback.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<configuration>
    <logger name="org.springframework" level="ERROR"/>
    <logger name="com.zetcode" level="INFO"/>

    <appender name="consoleAppender" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
        <encoder>
            <Pattern>%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} %blue(%-5level) %magenta(%logger{36}) - %msg %n
            </Pattern>
        </encoder>
    </appender>

    <root>
        <level value="INFO" />
        <appender-ref ref="consoleAppender" />
    </root>
</configuration>

The logback.xml is a configuration file for the Logback logging library.

resources/application.properties
app.name=My application
app.db=H2

Here we have some application properties.

com/zetcode/config/AppConfig.java
package com.zetcode.config;

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.PropertySource;

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.zetcode")
@PropertySource(value = "application.properties")
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    public H2Configurer databaseConfig() {
        return new H2Configurer();
    }
}

AppConfig is the application configuration class. It is decorated with the @Configuration annotation, which is a specialization of the @Component.

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.zetcode")
@PropertySource(value = "application.properties")
public class AppConfig {

Component scanning is enabled with @ComponentScan and the resources are loaded with @PropertySource.

@Bean
public H2Configurer databaseConfig() {
    return new H2Configurer();
}

With @Bean annotation, we create a H2Configurer bean.

com/zetcode/config/H2Configurer.java
package com.zetcode.config;

import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

public class H2Configurer {

    private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(H2Configurer.class);

    public H2Configurer() {

        logger.info("Configuring H2 database");
    }
}

The H2Configurer simply logs a message.

com/zetcode/Application.java
package com.zetcode;

import com.zetcode.config.AppConfig;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.AnnotationConfigApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class Application {

    private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Application.class);

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        var ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(AppConfig.class);
        var app = ctx.getBean(Application.class);

        app.run();

        ctx.close();
    }

    @Value("${app.name}")
    private String applicationName;

    @Value("${app.db}")
    private String database;

    private void run() {

        logger.info("Application name: {}", applicationName);
        logger.info("Database: {}", database);

    }
}

The application class prints the application properties. The properties are injected into the attributes with @Value.

var ctx = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(AppConfig.class);

The AppConfig is loaded into the application context.

$ mvn -q exec:java
20:07:39.769 INFO  com.zetcode.config.H2Configurer - Configuring H2 database 
20:07:39.801 INFO  com.zetcode.Application - Application name: My application 
20:07:39.816 INFO  com.zetcode.Application - Database: H2 

We run the application.

In this article we have configured a Spring application with @Configuration.

Author

My name is Jan Bodnar and I am a passionate programmer with many years of programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. So far, I have written over 1400 articles and 8 e-books. I have over eight years of experience in teaching programming.

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