Serving Alternative Formats

The default JSON format from the environment endpoints is perfect for consumption by Spring applications, because it maps directly onto the Environment abstraction. If you prefer, you can consume the same data as YAML or Java properties by adding a suffix (".yml", ".yaml" or ".properties") to the resource path. This can be useful for consumption by applications that do not care about the structure of the JSON endpoints or the extra metadata they provide (for example, an application that is not using Spring might benefit from the simplicity of this approach).

The YAML and properties representations have an additional flag (provided as a boolean query parameter called resolvePlaceholders) to signal that placeholders in the source documents (in the standard Spring ${…​} form) should be resolved in the output before rendering, where possible. This is a useful feature for consumers that do not know about the Spring placeholder conventions.