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javanaming-conventions
MrProper
MrProper

Reputation: 1580

Naming convention for properties in property file

What are the naming conventions for property names defined in properties files in Java? Can I use uppercase or only lowercase?

For example: bankAccountNumber or bank.account.number?

Is it defined somewhere on the internet?

Upvotes: 47

Views: 63216

Answers (8)

Jacek J
Jacek J

Reputation: 1165

Kebab case is recommended

According to the Spring Boot documentation (see notes in the table with relaxed binding) kebab case is recommended for use in .properties and .yml files.

Upvotes: 10

Sandeep Nalla
Sandeep Nalla

Reputation: 173

There is no standard convention for naming properties in property file.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.properties

As you are Java user, you can use camelCase.

For the given example, the name can be bankAccountNumber.

In case, if the requirement is to follow the hierarchy structure, dots can be used as below.

  • bank
  • bank.account.name
  • bank.account.number
  • bank.department.name

Upvotes: 0

subodh
subodh

Reputation: 6158

As per my understanding, there is no any standard rule written for .properties file in java. but if you see the .properties files inside the lib folder of Java\jre most of them have lower cased .properties file names. And the properties themselves are also lower cased. such as:

psfontj2d.properties

key values

courier_new=courier
courier_new_bold=courier_bold

Upvotes: 15

Ganesa Vijayakumar
Ganesa Vijayakumar

Reputation: 2602

Actually Resource Bundle accepts only fully qualified base name of the bundle, with no file extension. In this case it will try to load the bundle of files like this

messages/EN/properties.properties

I am sure you intend something different than the conventional internationalization, but convention would have been "messages_en.properties" (en when language, EN when country)

Upvotes: 0

Juvanis
Juvanis

Reputation: 25950

I guess there is no such common conventions for property files. However, using lowercase letters in an eligible/easy-to-understand format (e.g. bank.account.number) sounds good, and using the property files with their original extensions (.properties) is also recommended.

Upvotes: 1

rekiem87
rekiem87

Reputation: 1573

In JSF you can see in ValidationMessages.properties something

javax.validation.constraints.Pattern.message

or in JsfMessages.properties

javax.faces.component.UISelectOne.INVALID

So you can use wherever you like, i like just lowercase, package formatted

Upvotes: 2

Brian Agnew
Brian Agnew

Reputation: 272297

There's no particular standard for naming properties, but convention appears to be of the form 

a.b.c.d = x

in lowercase. I would expect some sort of informal hierarchy e.g. 

bank.
bank.account.
bank.account.name.
bank.account.pin.

etc.

If it's a property which directly affects a particular class I may name it after that class (or at least use the package name). However that is also an example of implementation leak, and I'd think seriously before doing that.

Upvotes: 5

Subhrajyoti Majumder
Subhrajyoti Majumder

Reputation: 41200

Naming convention is recommended as lowercase in property file. bank.account.number this is more appreciable.

Upvotes: 39

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