[JSPWIKI-1188] Support system property replacement for jsp wiki configuration properties

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 2.12.2
• Component/s: Core & storage
• Labels: pull-request-available
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Alex O'Ree
• Created: 30/Mar/24 13:56
• Updated: 18/Jun/24 17:05
• Resolved: 27/Apr/24 13:59

Description

As a sysadmin/integrator/user of jspwiki, i would really like to automate as much as integration work as possible for my use case. This includes

• generating markdown and attachments to "seed" or initialize the content for jsp wiki
• task automating the deployment of jspwiki's war into tomcat
• configuring jsp wiki via the properties file

i also need to be able to run on multiple systems, platforms and containers.

So that said, jspwiki's properties file has a few settings that require paths for storing content, such as

• jspwiki.fileSystemProvider.pageDir
• jspwiki.workDir
• jspwiki.basicAttachmentProvider.storageDir

When running in tomcat from the command line, the bin path is typically the current working directory, meaning relative paths are based on that path. However when ran as a windows or systemd service, sometimes the current working directory is not bin, it's up folder up. Anyhow, relative paths are a poor solution in this case.

In my experience, since i know i'm running on tomcat, i almost always use the system property `catalina.base` for locating paths relative to tomcat for extra storage locations for stuff.

Long story short, most systems support property substitution (maven uses velocity for example) and i'd like jspwiki to do the same.

Example file (as stored)

• jspwiki.fileSystemProvider.pageDir=${catalina.base}/wiki
• jspwiki.workDir=${catalina.base}/work/wiki
• jspwiki.basicAttachmentProvider.storageDir=${catalina.base}/wiki

which would be resolved to something like

• jspwiki.fileSystemProvider.pageDir=c:/tomcat/wiki
• jspwiki.workDir=c:/tomcat/work/wiki
• jspwiki.basicAttachmentProvider.storageDir=c:/tomcat/wiki

where catalina.base = c:/tomcat. This would effectively enable relative paths with some safe guards.

 

Now as far as implementation, i can think of a few options

• a DIY, 0 dependency approach to location a ${ and a } in a property value to do the substitution
• maybe use velocity to resolve it, assuming you want to add velocity to the dependency list for this project
• maybe apache commons config might be a better option as they already merge system environment variables and system properties. but i'm not clear if it does property substitution out of the box

i'm will to support either way

Issue Links

• links to: GitHub Pull Request #330