How to get properties without it being delimited?

Question

I'm using commons-configuration v1.10 and I'm using the class PropertiesConfiguration to read in my applications properties. I have a property which has commas in it, but when I read it in, it gets delimited, and I can't figure out how to get it not to.

It spits back the property all in order and commas included, but the reason why it's being a problem is because I get '[' and ']' surrounding it.

AbstractConfiguration has a function, setDelimiterParsingDisabled(), that disables delimiting, but I couldn't find a class which implemented it to read property files.

private static String readProperty(String property) {
    try {
        Configuration configuration = new PropertiesConfiguration(propertiesFile);
        return configuration.getProperty(property).toString();
    }
    catch(ConfigurationException e) {
        System.out.println("Issue reading " + property + " property");
        e.printStackTrace();
        System.exit(1);
        return "";
    }
}

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 25 '19 at 20:45

It works, but you should disable it or set it before you load the config.

PropertiesConfiguration config = new PropertiesConfiguration();
config.setDelimiterParsingDisabled(true)
config.setListDelimiter(';');
config.setFile(new File("application.properties"));
config.load();

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 25 '14 at 18:38

Posting your code would help.

According to the official docs you want AbstractConfiguration.setListDelimiter(null);

You can also use String methods to find and remove the surrounding []. Assuming the property is in a string called prop:

int start = prop.indexOf('[') + 1;
int end = prop.lastIndexOf(']');
String val = prop.substring(start,
    end > 0 ? end : prop.length());

indexOf returns -1 if the character isn't found, so adding 1 to get the start of the actual property value always works, even if the delimiter isn't present.

I've posted my code in the original post. If you need me to post more code, let me know. Manually removing the brackets would be my last option. — samwell, Jul 25 '14 at 18:46

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 28 '14 at 15:25

It doesn't look like I can use Apache Commons or PropertiesConfiguration to retrieve properties without it being delimited. However, java.util.Properties does not have this issue, so used that instead of PropertiesConfiguration.

MKYong has a good example of how to set it up, http://www.mkyong.com/java/java-properties-file-examples/

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 18 '16 at 06:51

PropertiesConfiguration properties = new PropertiesConfiguration();
properties.setDelimiterParsingDisabled(true);

The above code solves the problem, there is no need to switch to java.util.Properties. The hierarchy is as follows:

    PropertiesConfiguration
              |
              |(extends)
              |
    AbstractFileConfiguration
              |
              |(extends)
              |
    BaseConfiguration
              |
              |(extends)
              |
    AbstractConfiguration

In my case, I used Apache Properties Configuration specifically as it supports variable substitution which is not supported in java.util.Properties

How to get properties without it being delimited?

4 Answers4