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 extensive programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. To date, I have authored over 1,400 articles and 8 e-books. I possess more than ten years of experience in teaching programming.

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