For the latest stable version, please use Spring Framework 6.2.1!

Context Configuration with Environment Profiles

The Spring Framework has first-class support for the notion of environments and profiles (AKA "bean definition profiles"), and integration tests can be configured to activate particular bean definition profiles for various testing scenarios. This is achieved by annotating a test class with the @ActiveProfiles annotation and supplying a list of profiles that should be activated when loading the ApplicationContext for the test.

You can use @ActiveProfiles with any implementation of the SmartContextLoader SPI, but @ActiveProfiles is not supported with implementations of the older ContextLoader SPI.

Consider two examples with XML configuration and @Configuration classes:

<!-- app-config.xml -->
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xmlns:jdbc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc"
	xmlns:jee="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jee"
	xsi:schemaLocation="...">

	<bean id="transferService"
			class="com.bank.service.internal.DefaultTransferService">
		<constructor-arg ref="accountRepository"/>
		<constructor-arg ref="feePolicy"/>
	</bean>

	<bean id="accountRepository"
			class="com.bank.repository.internal.JdbcAccountRepository">
		<constructor-arg ref="dataSource"/>
	</bean>

	<bean id="feePolicy"
		class="com.bank.service.internal.ZeroFeePolicy"/>

	<beans profile="dev">
		<jdbc:embedded-database id="dataSource">
			<jdbc:script
				location="classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql"/>
			<jdbc:script
				location="classpath:com/bank/config/sql/test-data.sql"/>
		</jdbc:embedded-database>
	</beans>

	<beans profile="production">
		<jee:jndi-lookup id="dataSource" jndi-name="java:comp/env/jdbc/datasource"/>
	</beans>

	<beans profile="default">
		<jdbc:embedded-database id="dataSource">
			<jdbc:script
				location="classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql"/>
		</jdbc:embedded-database>
	</beans>

</beans>

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from "classpath:/app-config.xml"
@ContextConfiguration("/app-config.xml")
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
class TransferServiceTest {

	@Autowired
	TransferService transferService;

	@Test
	void testTransferService() {
		// test the transferService
	}
}
@ExtendWith(SpringExtension::class)
// ApplicationContext will be loaded from "classpath:/app-config.xml"
@ContextConfiguration("/app-config.xml")
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
class TransferServiceTest {

	@Autowired
	lateinit var transferService: TransferService

	@Test
	fun testTransferService() {
		// test the transferService
	}
}

When TransferServiceTest is run, its ApplicationContext is loaded from the app-config.xml configuration file in the root of the classpath. If you inspect app-config.xml, you can see that the accountRepository bean has a dependency on a dataSource bean. However, dataSource is not defined as a top-level bean. Instead, dataSource is defined three times: in the production profile, in the dev profile, and in the default profile.

By annotating TransferServiceTest with @ActiveProfiles("dev"), we instruct the Spring TestContext Framework to load the ApplicationContext with the active profiles set to {"dev"}. As a result, an embedded database is created and populated with test data, and the accountRepository bean is wired with a reference to the development DataSource. That is likely what we want in an integration test.

It is sometimes useful to assign beans to a default profile. Beans within the default profile are included only when no other profile is specifically activated. You can use this to define “fallback” beans to be used in the application’s default state. For example, you may explicitly provide a data source for dev and production profiles, but define an in-memory data source as a default when neither of these is active.

The following code listings demonstrate how to implement the same configuration and integration test with @Configuration classes instead of XML:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@Configuration
@Profile("dev")
public class StandaloneDataConfig {

	@Bean
	public DataSource dataSource() {
		return new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
			.setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType.HSQL)
			.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql")
			.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/test-data.sql")
			.build();
	}
}
@Configuration
@Profile("dev")
class StandaloneDataConfig {

	@Bean
	fun dataSource(): DataSource {
		return EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
				.setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType.HSQL)
				.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql")
				.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/test-data.sql")
				.build()
	}
}

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@Configuration
@Profile("production")
public class JndiDataConfig {

	@Bean(destroyMethod="")
	public DataSource dataSource() throws Exception {
		Context ctx = new InitialContext();
		return (DataSource) ctx.lookup("java:comp/env/jdbc/datasource");
	}
}
@Configuration
@Profile("production")
class JndiDataConfig {

	@Bean(destroyMethod = "")
	fun dataSource(): DataSource {
		val ctx = InitialContext()
		return ctx.lookup("java:comp/env/jdbc/datasource") as DataSource
	}
}

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@Configuration
@Profile("default")
public class DefaultDataConfig {

	@Bean
	public DataSource dataSource() {
		return new EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
			.setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType.HSQL)
			.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql")
			.build();
	}
}
@Configuration
@Profile("default")
class DefaultDataConfig {

	@Bean
	fun dataSource(): DataSource {
		return EmbeddedDatabaseBuilder()
				.setType(EmbeddedDatabaseType.HSQL)
				.addScript("classpath:com/bank/config/sql/schema.sql")
				.build()
	}
}

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@Configuration
public class TransferServiceConfig {

	@Autowired DataSource dataSource;

	@Bean
	public TransferService transferService() {
		return new DefaultTransferService(accountRepository(), feePolicy());
	}

	@Bean
	public AccountRepository accountRepository() {
		return new JdbcAccountRepository(dataSource);
	}

	@Bean
	public FeePolicy feePolicy() {
		return new ZeroFeePolicy();
	}
}
@Configuration
class TransferServiceConfig {

	@Autowired
	lateinit var dataSource: DataSource

	@Bean
	fun transferService(): TransferService {
		return DefaultTransferService(accountRepository(), feePolicy())
	}

	@Bean
	fun accountRepository(): AccountRepository {
		return JdbcAccountRepository(dataSource)
	}

	@Bean
	fun feePolicy(): FeePolicy {
		return ZeroFeePolicy()
	}
}

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@SpringJUnitConfig({
		TransferServiceConfig.class,
		StandaloneDataConfig.class,
		JndiDataConfig.class,
		DefaultDataConfig.class})
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
class TransferServiceTest {

	@Autowired
	TransferService transferService;

	@Test
	void testTransferService() {
		// test the transferService
	}
}
@SpringJUnitConfig(
		TransferServiceConfig::class,
		StandaloneDataConfig::class,
		JndiDataConfig::class,
		DefaultDataConfig::class)
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
class TransferServiceTest {

	@Autowired
	lateinit var transferService: TransferService

	@Test
	fun testTransferService() {
		// test the transferService
	}
}

In this variation, we have split the XML configuration into four independent @Configuration classes:

  • TransferServiceConfig: Acquires a dataSource through dependency injection by using @Autowired.

  • StandaloneDataConfig: Defines a dataSource for an embedded database suitable for developer tests.

  • JndiDataConfig: Defines a dataSource that is retrieved from JNDI in a production environment.

  • DefaultDataConfig: Defines a dataSource for a default embedded database, in case no profile is active.

As with the XML-based configuration example, we still annotate TransferServiceTest with @ActiveProfiles("dev"), but this time we specify all four configuration classes by using the @ContextConfiguration annotation. The body of the test class itself remains completely unchanged.

It is often the case that a single set of profiles is used across multiple test classes within a given project. Thus, to avoid duplicate declarations of the @ActiveProfiles annotation, you can declare @ActiveProfiles once on a base class, and subclasses automatically inherit the @ActiveProfiles configuration from the base class. In the following example, the declaration of @ActiveProfiles (as well as other annotations) has been moved to an abstract superclass, AbstractIntegrationTest:

As of Spring Framework 5.3, test configuration may also be inherited from enclosing classes. See @Nested test class configuration for details.

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@SpringJUnitConfig({
		TransferServiceConfig.class,
		StandaloneDataConfig.class,
		JndiDataConfig.class,
		DefaultDataConfig.class})
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
abstract class AbstractIntegrationTest {
}
@SpringJUnitConfig(
		TransferServiceConfig::class,
		StandaloneDataConfig::class,
		JndiDataConfig::class,
		DefaultDataConfig::class)
@ActiveProfiles("dev")
abstract class AbstractIntegrationTest {
}

  • Java

  • Kotlin

// "dev" profile inherited from superclass
class TransferServiceTest extends AbstractIntegrationTest {

	@Autowired
	TransferService transferService;

	@Test
	void testTransferService() {
		// test the transferService
	}
}
// "dev" profile inherited from superclass
class TransferServiceTest : AbstractIntegrationTest() {

	@Autowired
	lateinit var transferService: TransferService

	@Test
	fun testTransferService() {
		// test the transferService
	}
}

@ActiveProfiles also supports an inheritProfiles attribute that can be used to disable the inheritance of active profiles, as the following example shows:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

// "dev" profile overridden with "production"
@ActiveProfiles(profiles = "production", inheritProfiles = false)
class ProductionTransferServiceTest extends AbstractIntegrationTest {
	// test body
}
// "dev" profile overridden with "production"
@ActiveProfiles("production", inheritProfiles = false)
class ProductionTransferServiceTest : AbstractIntegrationTest() {
	// test body
}

Furthermore, it is sometimes necessary to resolve active profiles for tests programmatically instead of declaratively — for example, based on:

  • The current operating system.

  • Whether tests are being run on a continuous integration build server.

  • The presence of certain environment variables.

  • The presence of custom class-level annotations.

  • Other concerns.

To resolve active bean definition profiles programmatically, you can implement a custom ActiveProfilesResolver and register it by using the resolver attribute of @ActiveProfiles. For further information, see the corresponding javadoc. The following example demonstrates how to implement and register a custom OperatingSystemActiveProfilesResolver:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

// "dev" profile overridden programmatically via a custom resolver
@ActiveProfiles(
		resolver = OperatingSystemActiveProfilesResolver.class,
		inheritProfiles = false)
class TransferServiceTest extends AbstractIntegrationTest {
	// test body
}
// "dev" profile overridden programmatically via a custom resolver
@ActiveProfiles(
		resolver = OperatingSystemActiveProfilesResolver::class,
		inheritProfiles = false)
class TransferServiceTest : AbstractIntegrationTest() {
	// test body
}

  • Java

  • Kotlin

public class OperatingSystemActiveProfilesResolver implements ActiveProfilesResolver {

	@Override
	public String[] resolve(Class<?> testClass) {
		String profile = ...;
		// determine the value of profile based on the operating system
		return new String[] {profile};
	}
}
class OperatingSystemActiveProfilesResolver : ActiveProfilesResolver {

	override fun resolve(testClass: Class<*>): Array<String> {
		val profile: String = ...
		// determine the value of profile based on the operating system
		return arrayOf(profile)
	}
}