Once in a while you need to externalize some configuration without the overhead of a complete framework, here’s a simple method to read an XML formatted property file in java. In most cases, it’s a performance advantage to wrap this up in a Singleton pattern, but that’s a different topic altogether.
private getAttributes() {
final String filename = "example.properties";
final InputStream input = getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream(filename);
if(input==null){
System.err.println("Cannot find properties:"+ filename);
}
final java.util.Properties props = new java.util.Properties();
try {
props.loadFromXML(input);
hostprop = props.getProperty("hostname",null);
userprop = props.getProperty("username",null);
pswdprop = props.getProperty("password",null);
}
catch(final Exception e){
System.err.println("Error occurred while reading properties file:"+ input);
e.printStackTrace();
}
finally{
try {
input.close();
}
catch(final java.io.IOException ex){
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
The matching file would resemble…
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!DOCTYPE properties SYSTEM "http://java.sun.com/dtd/properties.dtd">
<properties>
<entry key="hostname">localhost</entry>
<entry key="username">example</entry>
<entry key="password">example</entry>
</properties>