Why @Value Is Discouraged in Spring Boot and How @ConfigurationProperties Solves It

The @Value annotation is widely known among Spring Boot developers for quickly loading configuration values into beans.

For example, you can inject the configuration key com.didispace.title directly into a service:

@Service
public class TestService {
    @Value("${com.didispace.title}")
    private String title;
}

Although convenient, using @Value is discouraged because it fragments configuration loading; the same property may be scattered across multiple services or controllers, making updates error‑prone and hard to maintain.

Instead, it is recommended to use @ConfigurationProperties to group related settings. For the prefix com.didispace, you can define a dedicated properties class:

@Configuration
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = "com.didispace")
public class DidispaceProperties {
    private String title;
}

The DidispaceProperties class will load all configurations that start with com.didispace. Other services or controllers can simply inject this bean, avoiding scattered @Value annotations and centralizing configuration changes.

Configuration validation can also be added by including the spring-boot-starter-validation dependency and annotating the properties class with @Validated and standard bean‑validation constraints:

@Validated
@Configuration
@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = "com.didispace")
public class DidispaceProperties {
    @NotNull
    private String title;
}

This approach enables automatic validation of configuration values, ensuring they meet required criteria before the application starts.

Overall, replacing @Value with @ConfigurationProperties and optional validation leads to cleaner, more maintainable Spring Boot configuration management.