CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javatomcatservletsjdbcjetty
Patrick
Patrick

Reputation: 5994

What is the best practice to deploy database config (username/password) with Java web-app (web.xml)?

I have a Java web-app using standard web.xml and servlets. At the moment, I'm using the <context-param> tags in web.xml to define the database configuration (JDBC url, username, password, etc.). These are picked up by a servlet in its init() method.

But I'd like to not include database username/password in my source repository.

For testing, I'm using jetty-maven-plugin. With that, I specify an option overrideDescriptor with a supplementary web.xml that is applied after the primary web.xml. I put my testing database configuration in this supplementary file, and everything works great.

For deployment, my host is using Tomcat. I'm not sure how to apply a database config here. Is there a similar way to specify a supplementary web.xml file? If not, what is the best practice to do this? Read the configuration from a separate properties file (or similar) included as a resource?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2901

Answers (4)

zawhtut
zawhtut

Reputation: 8561

In your application-context.xml , you can use the place holders and point the location of the placeholder's parameters to external properties file.

<bean id="propertyConfigurer" 
 class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
    <property name="location">
       <value>/WEB-INF/database-config.properties</value>
    </property>
</bean>
<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="${jdbc.driver}"/>
    <property name="url" value="${jdbc.url}"/>
    <property name="username" value="${jdbc.user}"/>
    <property name="password" value="${jdbc.password}"/>
</bean>

In your database-config.properties file. You can provide the placeholder's parameters. In this case database settings.

jdbc.driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
jdbc.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/school?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8
jdbc.user=root
jdbc.password=root

Upvotes: 0

Rodney Gitzel
Rodney Gitzel

Reputation: 2710

"Read the configuration from a separate properties file (or similar) included as a resource?"

Yes.

There are lots of ways to do THAT, too. My current project uses Spring's PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to read the appropriate properties files and allow any of the values to be used in a context file using the usual ${whatever} notation.

Addition:

Incidentally, we use a custom subclass of PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to set the locations of the files. We use a "global" properties file that applies to all environments (dev, test, uat, prod) and then one file for each environment that overrides the global settings.

The files themselves are deployed in a jar, but we don't need the flexibility of changing the values on the fly.

Upvotes: 1

matt b
matt b

Reputation: 139971

You could always store the configuration in an external .properties file, change your servlet to read from this instead (perhaps having web.xml point at the path to the file), and thus keep the file only on the server and out of source control.

Upvotes: 0

duffymo
duffymo

Reputation: 308938

You should be using connection pools and JNDI. You keep the credentials on the server that way. Users only need the JNDI lookup name (e.g., "jdbc/FooDataSource") to access the connection pool.

Upvotes: 8

Related Questions