java Properties - to expose or not to expose?
- by ring bearer
This might be an age old problem and I am sure everyone has their own ways.
Suppose I have some properties defined such as
secret.user.id=user
secret.password=password
website.url=http://stackoverflow.com
Suppose I have 100 different classes and places where I need to use these properties.
Which one is good
(1) I create a Util class that will load all properties and serve them using a key constant
Such as :
Util is a singleton that loads all properties and keeps up on getInstance() call.
Util myUtil = Util.getInstance();
String user = myUtil.getConfigByKey(Constants.SECRET_USER_ID);
String password = myUtil.getConfigByKey(Constants.SECRET_PASSWORD);
..
//getConfigByKey() - inturns invokes properties.get(..)
doSomething(user, password)
So wherever I need these properties, I can do steps above.
(2) I create a meaningful Class to represent these properties; say,
ApplicationConfig and provide getters to get specific properties.
So above code may look like:
ApplicationConfig config = ApplicationConfig.getInstance();
doSomething(config.getSecretUserId(), config.getPassword());
//ApplicationConfig would have instance variables that are initialized during
// getInstance() after loading from properties file.
Note: The properties file as such will have only minor changes in the future.
My personal choice is (2) - let me hear some comments?
