How to correctly specify a default value in the Spring @Value annotation?

Question

Initially, I have the following spec:

@Value("#{props.isFPL}") private boolean isFPL=false; 

This works fine correctly getting the value from the property file:

isFPL = true 

However, the following expression with default results in the error:

@Value("#{props.isFPL:false}") private boolean isFPL=false; 

Expression parsing failed; nested exception is org.springframework.expression.spel.SpelParseException: EL1041E:(pos 28): After parsing a valid expression, there is still more data in the expression: 'colon(:)'

I also tried to use $ instead of #.

@Value("${props.isFPL:true}") private boolean isFPL=false; 

Then the default value in annotation works fine but I did not get the correct value from the Properties file:

Answer 1

Try with $ as follows:

@Value("${props.isFPL:true}") private boolean isFPL=false; 

Also make sure you set the ignore-resource-no-found to true so that if the property file is missing, the default value will be taken.

Place the following in the context file if using XML based configuration:

<context:property-placeholder ignore-resource-not-found="true"/> 

If using Java configurations:

 @Bean  public static PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer   propertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer() {      PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer p =  new PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer();      p.setIgnoreResourceNotFound(true);      return p;  } 

Answer 2

For int type variable:

@Value("${my.int.config: #{100}}") int myIntConfig; 

Note: there is no space before the colon, but an extra space after the colon.