How to Manage Multiple Environments in Spring Boot Easily

In real‑world projects each environment (development, test, production) often requires different database, Redis, and other settings, and manually editing these configurations is time‑consuming and error‑prone. Spring Boot provides a concise solution for multi‑environment configuration.

1. Create profile‑specific configuration files

Spring Boot follows the naming convention application-{profile}.properties, where {profile} is the environment identifier. In the src/main/resources directory create three files: application-dev.properties – development environment application-test.properties – test environment application-prod.properties – production environment

The main application.properties holds common settings shared by all profiles.

2. Modify the configuration files

Set the common server port in application.properties: server.port=8088 Configure the development database in application-dev.properties:

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

Similarly adjust application-test.properties and application-prod.properties with their respective database URLs and credentials.

3. Switch the active profile

Spring Boot activates a profile based on the spring.profiles.active property. There are three common ways to set it:

(1) In the property file

spring.profiles.active=dev

This selects the development profile.

(2) Via IntelliJ IDEA run configuration

In IDEA’s Run/Debug Configuration panel you can add the VM option, program argument, or use the “Active profiles” field to specify the profile. The screenshot below illustrates the UI.

(3) Command‑line argument

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

When the JAR is launched with this argument, Spring Boot loads the application-dev.properties file. The startup log will show which profile was activated, as demonstrated in the following log screenshot.

By following these steps you can configure and switch between multiple environments in Spring Boot quickly and reliably, laying the groundwork for more advanced configuration management such as Spring Cloud Config.

Conclusion

Spring Boot’s profile‑based configuration is a fundamental and essential feature for backend development, simplifying environment management and reducing the risk of manual errors.