Providing Manual Hints

To improve the user experience and further assist the user in configuring a given property, you can provide additional metadata that:

  • Describes the list of potential values for a property.

  • Associates a provider, to attach a well defined semantic to a property, so that a tool can discover the list of potential values based on the project’s context.

Value Hint

The name attribute of each hint refers to the name of a property. In the initial example shown earlier, we provide five values for the spring.jpa.hibernate.ddl-auto property: none, validate, update, create, and create-drop. Each value may have a description as well.

If your property is of type Map, you can provide hints for both the keys and the values (but not for the map itself). The special .keys and .values suffixes must refer to the keys and the values, respectively.

Assume a my.contexts maps magic String values to an integer, as shown in the following example:

import java.util.Map;

import org.springframework.boot.context.properties.ConfigurationProperties;

@ConfigurationProperties("my")
public class MyProperties {

	private Map<String, Integer> contexts;

	// getters/setters ...

	public Map<String, Integer> getContexts() {
		return this.contexts;
	}

	public void setContexts(Map<String, Integer> contexts) {
		this.contexts = contexts;
	}

}

The magic values are (in this example) are sample1 and sample2. In order to offer additional content assistance for the keys, you could add the following JSON to the manual metadata of the module:

{"hints": [
	{
		"name": "my.contexts.keys",
		"values": [
			{
				"value": "sample1"
			},
			{
				"value": "sample2"
			}
		]
	}
]}
We recommend that you use an Enum for those two values instead. If your IDE supports it, this is by far the most effective approach to auto-completion.

Value Providers

Providers are a powerful way to attach semantics to a property. In this section, we define the official providers that you can use for your own hints. However, your favorite IDE may implement some of these or none of them. Also, it could eventually provide its own.

As this is a new feature, IDE vendors must catch up with how it works. Adoption times naturally vary.

The following table summarizes the list of supported providers:

Name Description

any

Permits any additional value to be provided.

class-reference

Auto-completes the classes available in the project. Usually constrained by a base class that is specified by the target parameter.

handle-as

Handles the property as if it were defined by the type defined by the mandatory target parameter.

logger-name

Auto-completes valid logger names and logger groups. Typically, package and class names available in the current project can be auto-completed as well as defined groups.

spring-bean-reference

Auto-completes the available bean names in the current project. Usually constrained by a base class that is specified by the target parameter.

spring-profile-name

Auto-completes the available Spring profile names in the project.
Only one provider can be active for a given property, but you can specify several providers if they can all manage the property in some way. Make sure to place the most powerful provider first, as the IDE must use the first one in the JSON section that it can handle. If no provider for a given property is supported, no special content assistance is provided, either.

Any

The special any provider value permits any additional values to be provided. Regular value validation based on the property type should be applied if this is supported.

This provider is typically used if you have a list of values and any extra values should still be considered as valid.

The following example offers on and off as auto-completion values for system.state:

{"hints": [
	{
		"name": "system.state",
		"values": [
			{
				"value": "on"
			},
			{
				"value": "off"
			}
		],
		"providers": [
			{
				"name": "any"
			}
		]
	}
]}

Note that, in the preceding example, any other value is also allowed.

Class Reference

The class-reference provider auto-completes classes available in the project. This provider supports the following parameters:

Parameter Type Default value Description

target

String (Class)

none

The fully qualified name of the class that should be assignable to the chosen value. Typically used to filter out-non candidate classes. Note that this information can be provided by the type itself by exposing a class with the appropriate upper bound.

concrete

boolean

true

Specify whether only concrete classes are to be considered as valid candidates.

The following metadata snippet corresponds to the standard server.servlet.jsp.class-name property that defines the class name to use must be an HttpServlet:

{"hints": [
	{
		"name": "server.servlet.jsp.class-name",
		"providers": [
			{
				"name": "class-reference",
				"parameters": {
					"target": "jakarta.servlet.http.HttpServlet"
				}
			}
		]
	}
]}

Handle As

The handle-as provider lets you substitute the type of the property to a more high-level type. This typically happens when the property has a String type, because you do not want your configuration classes to rely on classes that may not be on the classpath. This provider supports the following parameters:

Parameter Type Default value Description

target

String (Class)

none

The fully qualified name of the type to consider for the property. This parameter is mandatory.

The following types can be used:

  • Any Enum: Lists the possible values for the property. (We recommend defining the property with the Enum type, as no further hint should be required for the IDE to auto-complete the values)

  • Charset: Supports auto-completion of charset/encoding values (such as UTF-8)

  • Locale: auto-completion of locales (such as en_US)

  • MimeType: Supports auto-completion of content type values (such as text/plain)

  • Resource: Supports auto-completion of Spring’s Resource abstraction to refer to a file on the filesystem or on the classpath (such as classpath:/sample.properties)

If multiple values can be provided, use a Collection or Array type to teach the IDE about it.

The following metadata snippet corresponds to the standard spring.liquibase.change-log property that defines the path to the changelog to use. It is actually used internally as a Resource but cannot be exposed as such, because we need to keep the original String value to pass it to the Liquibase API.

{"hints": [
	{
		"name": "spring.liquibase.change-log",
		"providers": [
			{
				"name": "handle-as",
				"parameters": {
					"target": "org.springframework.core.io.Resource"
				}
			}
		]
	}
]}

Logger Name

The logger-name provider auto-completes valid logger names and logger groups. Typically, package and class names available in the current project can be auto-completed. If groups are enabled (default) and if a custom logger group is identified in the configuration, auto-completion for it should be provided. Specific frameworks may have extra magic logger names that can be supported as well.

This provider supports the following parameters:

Parameter Type Default value Description

group

boolean

true

Specify whether known groups should be considered.

Since a logger name can be any arbitrary name, this provider should allow any value but could highlight valid package and class names that are not available in the project’s classpath.

The following metadata snippet corresponds to the standard logging.level property. Keys are logger names, and values correspond to the standard log levels or any custom level. As Spring Boot defines a few logger groups out-of-the-box, dedicated value hints have been added for those.

{"hints": [
	{
		"name": "logging.level.keys",
		"values": [
			{
				"value": "root",
				"description": "Root logger used to assign the default logging level."
			},
			{
				"value": "sql",
				"description": "SQL logging group including Hibernate SQL logger."
			},
			{
				"value": "web",
				"description": "Web logging group including codecs."
			}
		],
		"providers": [
			{
				"name": "logger-name"
			}
		]
	},
	{
		"name": "logging.level.values",
		"values": [
			{
				"value": "trace"
			},
			{
				"value": "debug"
			},
			{
				"value": "info"
			},
			{
				"value": "warn"
			},
			{
				"value": "error"
			},
			{
				"value": "fatal"
			},
			{
				"value": "off"
			}

		],
		"providers": [
			{
				"name": "any"
			}
		]
	}
]}

Spring Bean Reference

The spring-bean-reference provider auto-completes the beans that are defined in the configuration of the current project. This provider supports the following parameters:

Parameter Type Default value Description

target

String (Class)

none

The fully qualified name of the bean class that should be assignable to the candidate. Typically used to filter out non-candidate beans.

The following metadata snippet corresponds to the standard spring.jmx.server property that defines the name of the MBeanServer bean to use:

{"hints": [
	{
		"name": "spring.jmx.server",
		"providers": [
			{
				"name": "spring-bean-reference",
				"parameters": {
					"target": "javax.management.MBeanServer"
				}
			}
		]
	}
]}
The binder is not aware of the metadata. If you provide that hint, you still need to transform the bean name into an actual Bean reference using by the ApplicationContext.

Spring Profile Name

The spring-profile-name provider auto-completes the Spring profiles that are defined in the configuration of the current project.

The following metadata snippet corresponds to the standard spring.profiles.active property that defines the name of the Spring profile(s) to enable:

{"hints": [
	{
		"name": "spring.profiles.active",
		"providers": [
			{
				"name": "spring-profile-name"
			}
		]
	}
]}