Spring Boot provides a very neat way to load properties for an application. Consider a set of properties described using YAML format:

prefix:
    stringProp1: propValue1
    stringProp2: propValue2
    intProp1: 10
    listProp:
        - listValue1
        - listValue2
    mapProp:
        key1: mapValue1
        key2: mapValue2

These entries can also be described in a traditional application.properties file the following way:

prefix.stringProp1=propValue1
prefix.stringProp2=propValue2
prefix.intProp1=10
prefix.listProp[0]=listValue1
prefix.listProp[1]=listValue2
prefix.mapProp.key1=mapValue1
prefix.mapProp.key2=mapValue2

It has taken me a little while, but I do like the hierarchical look of the properties described in a YAML format.

So now, given this property file, a traditional Spring application would have loaded up the properties in the following way:

public class SamplePropertyLoadingTest {
    @Value("${prefix.stringProp1}")
    private String stringProp1;

Note the placeholder for "prefix.stringProp" key.

This however is not ideal for loading a family of related properties, say in this specific case namespaced by the prefix conveniently named "prefix".

The approach Spring boot takes is to define a bean that can hold all the families of related properties this way:

@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = "prefix")
@Component
public class SampleProperty {
    private String stringProp1;
    private String stringProp2;
    @Max(99)
    @Min(0)
    private Integer intProp1;
    private List<String> listProp;
    private Map<String, String> mapProp;

    ...
}

At runtime, all the fields would be bound to the related properties cleanly.

Additionally note the JSR-303 annotations on top of the "intProp1" field that validates that the value of the field is between 0 and 99. @ConfigurationProperties will call the validator to ensure that the bound bean is validated.

An integration test using this feature is shown here:

package prop;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.boot.test.SpringApplicationConfiguration;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner;

import static org.hamcrest.MatcherAssert.assertThat;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.*;

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@SpringApplicationConfiguration(classes = SampleWebApplication.class)
public class SamplePropertyLoadingTest {
    @Autowired
    private SampleProperty sampleProperty;

    @Value("${prefix.stringProp1}")
    private String stringProp1;

    @Test
    public void testLoadingOfProperties() {
        System.out.println("stringProp1 = " + stringProp1);
        assertThat(sampleProperty.getStringProp1(), equalTo("propValue1"));
        assertThat(sampleProperty.getStringProp2(), equalTo("propValue2"));
        assertThat(sampleProperty.getIntProp1(), equalTo(10));
        assertThat(sampleProperty.getListProp(), hasItems("listValue1", "listValue2"));
        assertThat(sampleProperty.getMapProp(), allOf(hasEntry("key1", "mapValue1"),
                hasEntry("key2", "mapValue2")));
    }
}

If you are interested in exploring this sample further, I have a github repo with the code checked in here.