@ConfigurationProperties: A Powerful Tool for Spring Boot Configuration

Introduction:

While working with Spring Boot applications, most of the times we need to externalize configurations into properties files or environment variables. This makes our application more flexible and easier to maintain in production.

In Spring Boot, one of the best ways to handle these externalized configurations is by using the @ConfigurationProperties annotation.

@ConfigurationProperties is an annotation in Spring Boot used to map application properties (defined in .properties or .yaml files) to Java objects(Java Beans). It allows you to bind hierarchical properties from a configuration file into a POJO (Plain Old Java Object), which can then be injected into your application's components.

In this blog, we’ll explore what @ConfigurationProperties is, why it’s useful, how to use it, and why it is preferable over the @Value annotation.

Why to use @ConfigurationProperties :

Using @ConfigurationProperties has several benefits:

1. Type Safety: It binds properties from the configuration files into strongly-typed POJOs, allowing for better validation and type safety.
2. Readability: Rather than using multiple @Value…