Grails 1.3.7
I have some configuration located in an external config file. One of the entires looks like this:
site.maintenance.mode = false
I have a filter which checks for certain config settings for specific URLs. When I do a run-app or deploy a WAR into Tomcat and do:
boolean maintenanceMode = grailsApplication.config.site.maintenance.mode
maintenanceMode is coming back true. If I look at the config object in debug mode, this is what I get:
site={maintenance={mode=false, message="<p>Our trail guides are working hard to get the system back on track.</p><p>We're sorry, the account system is down for maintenance at the moment. We'll get it back online as quickly as we can. Thanks for your patience.</p>"}}
I have a controller that I use to reload this config file dynamically and hitting this controller will fix the issue. But I'm curious as to why it is incorrect on first runs and why the discrepency in what is getting put in the maintenanceMode variable vs what is actually in the config object.
Are you using a Java properties file or a Groovy file? If you're using a properties file then I believe Grails will interpret site.maintenance.mode=false the same way as site.maintenance.mode='false' and since Groovy will interpret:
"false".asBoolean() == true
then that would explain why you would see that initial true value.
I just ran a simple test locally to verify this behavior. When I externalize my properties in a file called test.properties then site.maintenance.mode=false initially gets a boolean value of true, when I use a file called test.groovy then it interprets the boolean value of site.maintenance.mode=false as false. I believe this is because when you use a Groovy file Grails uses ConfigurationSlurper to process it but when you use a properties file Grails interprets everything as String name/value pairs.
What I do is to have an external Config.groovy file, for instance: MyConfig.groovy
At the end of the standard grails Config.groovy file, I have the following:
def ENV_NAME = "MY_EXTERNAL_CONFIG"
if(!grails.config.locations || !(grails.config.locations instanceof List)) {
grails.config.locations = []
}
if(System.getenv(ENV_NAME)) {
grails.config.locations << "file:" + System.getenv(ENV_NAME)
} else if(System.getProperty(ENV_NAME)) {
grails.config.locations << "file:" + System.getProperty(ENV_NAME)
} else {
println "No external Configs found."
}
So now you can have a MyConfig.groovy file anywhere in production environment (for example) and then set an Environment system variable to point to this file (or pass it as parameter to startup.sh), before you start tomcat:
MY_EXTERNAL_CONFIG="/home/tomcat/configs/MyConfig.groovy"
export MY_EXTERNAL_CONFIG
That's it. Now you have an external MyConfig.groovy file. The properties in it are accessible from your grails app as they were part of the standard Config.groovy
import org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.*
//...
ConfigurationHolder.config.foo.bar.hello
Related
At the top of config.groovy is this line (now uncommented):
grails.config.locations = [ "file:${userHome}/.grails/${appName}-config.properties"]
So we created a properties file on windows in our home dir /.grails, which contains these lines for the database migration plugin:
contents of c:\Users\me\.grails\myapp-config.properties:
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStartContexts=XXX
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStart=true
we restart the app, it completely ignores these values.
If however, we change to a groovy file thusly:
grails.config.locations = [ "file:${userHome}/.grails/${appName}-config.groovy"]
And create the following file: c:\Users\me.grails\myapp-config.groovy
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStartContexts = 'XXX'
grails.plugin.databasemigration.updateOnStart = true
It works perfectly. It seems it is not possible to use property files with the database migration plugin at least.
However, we need to be able to change these values on production (tomcat + war), which we assume cannot compile groovy files, so wont work.
Luckily, the below part does actually work:
if (System.properties["${appName}.config.location"]) {
grails.config.locations << "file:" + System.properties["${appName}.config.location"]
}
But we would really like to get the home dir version working, so we dont have to worry about system properties and command line arguments in our dev environments.
Any ideas?
change the path separator for windows from / to \
try to put the complete path in locations to check the file can be read
I want to separate config files into few small parts. In Config.groovy I have defined grails.config.locations array to point these files:
grails.config.locations = [
"classpath:config.properties",
"classpath:some-config.groovy",
]
And then I am checking configuration map by accessing: grailsApplication.config
The first configuration file is Java properties file, which loads properly:
config.properties
grails.serverURL=http://localhost:8080/selly
..
The second one is .groovy file which in reference to the documentation (http://grails.org/doc/latest/guide/conf.html#configExternalized) should be loaded from automatically parsed ConfigSlurper file format:
some-config.groovy:
app {
testvar {
foo = true
}
}
But grailsApplication.config.app does not exists (no field in debug and println returns empty map [:]).
Can anyone give an example of loading groovy files?
Files are placed in: grails-app\conf\, for example grails-app\conf\config.properties
It looks like you've configured both files correctly. grailsApplication.config.app might be null simply because it is not a leaf node, have you tried grailsApplication.config.app.testvar.foo?
As I am trying to write a Grails Plugin, I stumbled upon two problems:
how do I modify one of the configuration files like Config.groovy or DataSource.groovy from witin the _install.groovy script? It is easy to append something to those files, but how do I modify it in a clean way? text.replaceAll()? Or should I create a new config file?
how do I get the name of the current application into which the plugin will be installed? I tried to use app.name and appName but both do not work.
Is there maybe somewhere a good tutorial on creating plugins which I haven't found yet?
Here is an example of editing configuration files from scripts/_Install.groovy.
My plugin copies three files to the target directory.
.hgignore is used for version control,
DataSource.groovy replaces the default version, and
SecurityConfig.groovy contains extra settings.
I prefer to edit the application's files as little as possible, especially because I expect to change the security setup a few years down the road. I also need to use properties from a jcc-server-config.properties file which is customized for each application server in our system.
Copying the files is easy.
println ('* copying .hgignore ')
ant.copy(file: "${pluginBasedir}/src/samples/.hgignore",
todir: "${basedir}")
println ('* copying SecurityConfig.groovy')
ant.copy(file: "${pluginBasedir}/src/samples/SecurityConfig.groovy",
todir: "${basedir}/grails-app/conf")
println ('* copying DataSource.groovy')
ant.copy(file: "${pluginBasedir}/src/samples/DataSource.groovy",
todir: "${basedir}/grails-app/conf")
The hard part is getting Grails to pick up the new configuration file. To do this, I have to edit the application's grails-app/conf/Config.groovy. I will add two configuration files to be found on the classpath.
println ('* Adding configuration files to grails.config.locations');
// Add configuration files to grails.config.locations.
def newConfigFiles = ["classpath:jcc-server-config.properties",
"classpath:SecurityConfig.groovy"]
// Get the application's Config.groovy file
def cfg = new File("${basedir}/grails-app/conf/Config.groovy");
def cfgText = cfg.text
def appendedText = new StringWriter()
appendedText.println ""
appendedText.println ("// Added by edu-sunyjcc-addons plugin");
// Slurp the configuration so we can look at grails.config.locations.
def config = new ConfigSlurper().parse(cfg.toURL());
// If it isn't defined, create it as a list.
if (config.grails.config.locations.getClass() == groovy.util.ConfigObject) {
appendedText.println('grails.config.locations = []');
} else {
// Don't add configuration files that are already on the list.
newConfigFiles = newConfigFiles.grep {
!config.grails.config.locations.contains(it)
};
}
// Add each surviving location to the list.
newConfigFiles.each {
// The name will have quotes around it...
appendedText.println "grails.config.locations << \"$it\"";
}
// Write the new configuration code to the end of Config.groovy.
cfg.append(appendedText.toString());
The only problem is adding SecurityConfig.groovy to the classpath. I found that you can do that by creating the following event in the plugin's /scripts/Events.groovy.
eventCompileEnd = {
ant.copy(todir:classesDirPath) {
fileset(file:"${basedir}/grails-app/conf/SecurityConfig.groovy")
}
}
Ed.
You might try changing the configuration within the MyNiftyPlugin.groovy file (assuming that your plugin is named my-nifty). I've found that I can change the configuration values within the doWithApplicationContext closure. Here's an example.
def doWithApplicationContext = { applicationContext ->
def config = application.config;
config.edu.mycollege.server.name = 'http://localhost:8080'
config.edu.mycollege.server.instance = 'pprd'
}
The values you enter here do show up in the grailsApplication.config variable at run time. If it works for you, it will be a neater solution, because it doesn't require changes to the client project.
I must qualify that with the fact that I wasn't able to get Spring Security to work by this technique. I believe that my plugin (which depends on Spring Security) was loaded after the security was initialized. I decided to add an extra file to the grails-app/conf directory.
HTH.
For modifying configuration files, you should use ConfigSlurper:
def configParser = new ConfigSlurper(grailsSettings.grailsEnv)
configParser.binding = [userHome: userHome]
def config = configParser.parse(new URL("file:./grails-app/conf/Config.groovy"))
If you need to get application name from script, try:
metadata.'app.name'
Hypothetical situation:
I have downloaded a Grails application from the web as a WAR file, foo.war. In the documentation it says that I can put my own custom configuration in /foo.groovy, because this path is included in grails.config.locations in Config.groovy. I can dump all my custom config in that one file and life is good.
How, here's my problem... The configuration for FooApp is big and hairy, and I don't want it all in one file. I would like to break it up into /bar.groovy and /baz.groovy to keep things organized. Is there a way to specify something in /foo.groovy so that FooApp will also pick up /bar.groovy and /baz.groovy and process them?
I already tried appending paths to grails.config.locations in /foo.groovy, but Grails didn't like that and threw a nasty exception on startup. I'm not sure what other approach to take.
Edit for clarity:
grails-app/conf/Config.groovy looks like this:
grails.config.locations = ["file:/foo.groovy"]
Now, without modifying grails-app/conf/Config.groovy, and only by modifying /foo.groovy, is there a way to load more config files other than /foo.groovy?
You could slurp the additional config files within foo.groovy:
foo.groovy
port {
to {
somewhere=8080
another {
place=7070
}
}
}
host = new ConfigSlurper().parse(new File("bar.groovy").toURL())
bar.groovy
to {
somewhere="http://localhost/"
another {
place="https://another.place.com/"
}
}
So within your app you have:
assert grailsApplication.config.port.to.somewhere == 8080
assert grailsApplication.config.port.to.another.place == 7070
assert grailsApplication.config.host.to.somewhere == "http://localhost/"
assert grailsApplication.config.host.to.another.place == "https://another.place.com/"
I've added the code below to my Config.groovy file, however, in spite of having it I'm not able to access the external configuration properties in the Config.groovy file.
Does anyone how I can access the properties of the external configuration file within the Config.groovy file?
if (System.getProperty("CONFIG")) {
grails.config.locations << "file:" + System.getProperty("CONFIG")
} else {
grails.config.locations << "file:./${appName}-config.properties"
}
Note: I've tried using ${...} like I would in Spring configuration files, ConfigurationHolder.config, and grailsApplication to access the properties but none of these approaches work.
Thanks.
I think this would cause confusion due to the order the config files are loaded. I'm pretty sure at the time the Config.groovy is loaded, the external one hasn't been loaded yet.
So your "CONFIG" property is set in the external file, which is the name of the file that you want to load?
How I usually do this is just list all the files that I could use.
grails.config.locations = [
"file:../app-config/myapp-dataSource.groovy",
"file:../app-config/myapp-config.groovy"
]
environments {
development {
grails.config.locations = [
"file:../myapp-config/myapp-dataSource.groovy",
"file:../myapp-config/myapp-config.groovy",
"file:${userHome}/myapp-config/myapp-dataSource.groovy",
"file:${userHome}/myapp-config/myapp-config.groovy"
]
}
...
}
If the files do not exist they are just skipped. Files I believe are loaded in order, so anything in the ${userHome} dir, will override the previously set values. This is nice for development, as you can have machine local ways of changing settings, and not have to worry about these config changes being checked in.
#Nick Larson,
What you mentioned about CONFIG not loaded is not true. If CONFIG is a JVM parameter, set with -DCONFIG=xxxx, then it is set before config.groovy kicks in.
#Kin1,
You are using file: protocol for accessing the property file. Are you trying to access this in a WAR or EAR file or is it a file based system.
In a WAR or EAR file you need to use classpath: for the file, file: does not work. Also, you have to make sure to actually copy the Groovy file(not compiled class file) in the classpath. We do it on WAR create event and the build process copy the config file into one of the classpath location.
Hope this helps.
Add the below line in config.groovy
grails.config.locations = [ "classpath:grails-app-config.properties"]
environments {
development {
grails.logging.jul.usebridge = true
grails.config.locations = ["file:C:\\conf\\externalfile.groovy"]
}
production {
grails.logging.jul.usebridge = false
grails.config.locations = ["file:/opt/config/externalfile.groovy"]
// TODO: grails.serverURL = "http://www.changeme.com"
}
}
If you want to access any property from external configuration(config.groovy) then just declare the property like
property = property value eg:(ImagePath = "C:\\Users\\Saved Pictures")
access it like grailsApplication.config."property"
eg:(grailsApplication.config.ImagePath)
NOTE: dont use def just a property and its value.