Access maven project version in Spring config files

Question

I would like to display the currently running version of my web application in the page. The project is based on Maven, Spring, and Wicket.

I'd like to somehow get the value of maven's ${project.version} and use it in my spring XML files, similarly to the way I use the Spring PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to read a property file for settings that I use in my application.

If I had the maven project.version available as a variable in my Spring config, I could do something like this:

<bean id="applicationBean" class="com.mysite.web.WicketApplication">
<property name="version"><value>${project.version}</value></property>
</bean>

How can I do this?

Answer 1

You can use Maven filtering as already suggested.

Or you could just read the pom.properties file created by Maven under META-INF directory directly with Spring:

<util:properties id="pom" 
     location="classpath:META-INF/groupId/artifactId/pom.properties" />

and use the bean.

The only drawback of the later approach is that the pom.properties is created at package phase time (and won't be there during, say, test).

Answer 2

One technique would be to use mavens filtering. You can insert placeholders in resource files like which then get replaced with values from the build during the resource phase.

Look up "How do I filter resource files?" in the Maven getting started guide