Dynamic Refresh of Spring Boot Configuration from Database Without Restart

In many projects there is a need to modify Spring Boot configuration at runtime without restarting the application.

This article explains how to load configuration from a database and provide a one‑click refresh mechanism.

The approach consists of several key steps:

Obtain the application context via ConfigurableApplicationContext.

Get the current Environment object.

Fetch the latest configuration from the database (or other source).

Replace the current environment properties using MutablePropertySources and a new MapPropertySource.

Refresh specific beans by invoking ContextRefresher.refresh(), optionally asynchronously.

The article provides Maven dependencies for Spring Cloud 2021.0.1, shows how to add @RefreshScope to beans, and gives concrete code examples for acquiring the context, environment, loading configuration via gRPC, updating the property source, and triggering an asynchronous refresh.

<!-- Maven parent dependency -->
<spring-cloud.version>2021.0.1</spring-cloud.version>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-cloud-dependencies</artifactId>
    <version>${spring-cloud.version}</version>
    <type>pom</type>
    <scope>import</scope>
</dependency>

@RefreshScope
public class ConfigService {
    @Value("${grpc.client.xyregiserve.port}")
    private String regiservePort;
    @Value("${grpc.client.xyregiserve.url}")
    private String regiserveUrl;
    @Autowired
    private ConfigurableApplicationContext applicationContext;
    @Autowired
    private ContextRefresher contextRefresher;
    // ... method refreshConfig() implements the steps described above ...
}

A REST controller with endpoint /refresh/config is presented to trigger the refresh:

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/refresh/config")
public class RefreshConfig {
    @Autowired
    private ConfigService configService;
    @GetMapping
    public AjaxResult refresh() throws Exception {
        configService.refreshConfig();
        return AjaxResult.success();
    }
}

Finally, a test class demonstrates that after changing a configuration value in the database, calling the refresh endpoint updates the in‑memory configuration without restarting the service.