Configuring Multiple Environments in Spring Boot

When developing a project, you often need to handle different runtime environments such as development, testing, and production, each with its own database, Redis, and other settings. Manually changing these configurations for each release is error‑prone and time‑consuming. Spring Boot provides a simple solution for multi‑environment configuration.

1. Create configuration files for each environment

Follow Spring Boot's naming convention application-{profile}.properties , where {profile} is the environment identifier. In the resources directory create application-dev.properties , application-test.properties , and application-prod.properties for development, testing, and production respectively.

The main file application.properties holds common settings, while the profile‑specific files contain environment‑specific values.

2. Modify the configuration files

First, set a common server port in application.properties :

# Server port configuration
server.port=8088

Then, add database connection details to application-dev.properties (similar changes apply to the test and prod files):

# Specify database driver
spring.datasource.driver-class-name=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
# JDBC URL for the database
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1:3306/myapp_dev
# Database username
spring.datasource.username=root
# Database password
spring.datasource.password=root

After updating each profile file with the appropriate settings, the multi‑environment configuration is complete.

3. Switch between environments

The active profile can be set in three ways:

**Configuration file** – add spring.profiles.active=dev (or test , prod ) to application.properties :

# Active system profile
spring.profiles.active=dev

**IDE (IntelliJ IDEA)** – configure the active profile in the Run/Debug Configuration using VM options, program arguments, or the "Active profiles" field.

**Command line** – launch the jar with the profile argument:

java -jar xxx.jar --spring.profiles.active=dev

When the application starts, Spring Boot loads the corresponding application-{profile}.properties file, as shown in the startup logs.

Conclusion

Spring Boot's multi‑environment configuration is a fundamental and essential feature, forming the basis for more advanced solutions such as Spring Cloud Config.