how to define not mandatory property in spring?

Question

I'm using spring 3 with PropertyPlaceholderConfigurator.

My properties code looks like as following:

@Configuration public class MyProps {      @Value("${prop1}")     public String prop1;      ... } 

If I do not have a prop1 in my .properties file the spring fails to initialize it's context.

The question is how can I define that this property is not mandatory? some annotation, configuration?

Answer 1

You could use a default value:

@Value("${prop1:}") public String prop1; 

and spring will inject an empty string if the property isn't defined. The syntax is ${property:defaultValue}.