Last updated: June 30, 2023
In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to convert the default application.properties file we receive when we download a new Spring Boot project from Spring Initializer to the more readable application.yml file.
Before diving directly into the topic, let’s see the difference between these two file formats in the form of code.
In the application.properties file, properties are stored as a single-line configuration. Spring Boot generates the properties file as the default one:
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:h2:mem:testDB
spring.datasource.username=user
spring.datasource.password=testpwdOn the other hand, we can create an application.yml. This is a YML-based file that is easy to read when having hierarchical data compared to the properties file:
spring:
datasource:
url: jdbc:h2:mem:testDB
username: user
password: testpwd
As we can see, with the help of YML-based configuration, we have removed the need to add repeated prefixes (spring.datasource).
If we’re using IntelliJ as our IDE to run the Spring Boot application, we can do the conversion by installing the following plugin:
We need to go to File > Settings > Plugins > Install “Convert YAML and Properties file”.
Once we’ve installed the plugin, we:
We’ll be able to convert it back as well.
Instead of installing plugins, we can also directly copy-paste the config from our codebase to the Mageddo converter website.
For security purposes, ensure we don’t enter passwords for conversion on third-party websites:
We put the code in the respective properties/YML section and converted it into another format.
In this tutorial, we’ve seen the difference between .properties and .yml files and learned how to convert the application.properties file to application.yml and vice-versa using various tools and plugins highlighted.
