🌱 What are Spring Profiles?

Spring Profiles allow you to define different configurations for different environments — like dev, test, or prod.

🔁 Instead of changing code every time you deploy, you create separate config files, and Spring Boot automatically picks the right one.

💡 Real-Life Example

You might want:

  • Local DB for development
  • MySQL for production
  • H2 for testing

Using profiles, you can define different properties for each case.

🛠 How to Create Profiles

1. Create property files:

application-dev.properties  
application-test.properties  
application-prod.properties

2. In each file, define environment-specific values:

Example application-dev.properties:

server.port=8081
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:h2:mem:testdb

Example application-prod.properties:

server.port=8080
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://prod-db-url

🚀 Activate a Profile

✅ Method 1: In application.properties

spring.profiles.active=dev

✅ Method 2: As a Command Line Argument


java -jar app.jar --spring.profiles.active=prod

✅ Method 3: In application.yml

spring:
  profiles:
    active: test

🧪 Use Profile in Code

You can also use profiles in Java code using @Profile:

@Profile("dev")
@Component
public class DevDataLoader implements CommandLineRunner {
    public void run(String... args) {
        System.out.println("Loading dev data...");
    }
}

✅ Benefits of Spring Profiles

  • Clean separation of configs
  • Easy to switch environments
  • No need to change code between dev/test/prod
  • Helpful in CI/CD and Docker setups

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