Support for ant wildcards in configuration properties

[filiphr]

I have the following configuration properties

@ConfigurationProperties(prefix = "dummy")
public DummyProperties {

    private Resource[] dummyFiles;

    // getters and setters
}

And then in my application.properties

dummy.dummy-files=classpath*:/com/example/dummy/*.json

When this is done then DummyProperties#dummyFiles contains a single ServletContextResource.
If you change the property to classpath*:/com/example/dummy/single.json then it works correctly.

I asked in the gitter channel and @snicoll said that you don't support this. However, I didn't understand if this is on purpose or it's just not implemented. If it is the first sorry for opening this issue and feel free to close it.

[snicoll]

@filiphr we're using Spring Framework's property editor for this and I don't think that ant-style patterns are supported so I'd assume that this issue will have to move to the framework. But let's use the opportunity of this issue to figure out what we can do.

[filiphr]

I am not sure what the property editor from Spring Framework is. One thing I know is that when the same expression is used in @Value everything works correctly.

For example doing:

@Value("${dummy.dummy-files}")
private Resource[] resources;

Maybe different strategy is used for @Value and @ConfigurationProperties. To me they are "similar" and that is why I expected that to work.

Thanks for having a look at it.

[snicoll]

One thing I know is that when the same expression is used in @Value everything works correctly.

Well that's crucial to the report. It means then we have to configure something on the Spring Boot side as @Value is a Spring Framework feature.

[snicoll]

It is interesting to see that @PropertySource does not support that either

[rfelgent]

Hello,

are there any new information about progress ? I miss that feature "ant style path patterns" for configuration properties in my project, too. I use SB 1.5.10

[philwebb]

@rfelgent There's not been any recent updates to the issue and since it's a relatively low priority nobody is actively working on it. It might be easer to fix this with Spring Boot 2.0 as much of the property binding support was rewritten. Even if we find a fix, I'm afraid we won't be adding this to Spring Boot 1.5.x.