Moving property files outside jar in spring standalone application

In one of Spring standalone project, we needed to move the property files out of the jar for easy configurability.
I followed following steps:
1. Move property files out of JAR and put in a directory say “target/lib”

<plugin>

       <artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>

       <executions>

         <execution>

           <phase>validate</phase>

           <goals>

             <goal>run</goal>

           </goals>

           <configuration>

             <tasks>

        <copy todir="target/lib" overwrite="true">

            <fileset dir="src/main/resources/">

                <include name="*.properties"/>

                <include name="*.xml"/>

            </fileset>

        </copy>

             </tasks>

           </configuration>

         </execution>

       </executions>

     </plugin>

2. Exclude inclusion of files from the JAR. This will include only .hbm files in resource and any XML file in META-INF (I wanted to keep application-context.xml used by spring inside JAR)

<resource>

    <directory>${basedir}/src/main/resources</directory>

    <filtering>true</filtering>

    <includes>

        <include>**/*.hbm.xml</include>

        <include>META-INF/*.xml</include>

    </includes>

</resource>

 

3. Use maven-jar plugin to include class path information in MANIFEST.MF. This one is MOST important

<plugin>

    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>

    <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>

    <configuration>

        <archive>

            <manifest>

                <addClasspath>true</addClasspath>

                <classpathPrefix>lib/</classpathPrefix>

                           <mainClass>

                                 com.usat.digitalportal.service.impl.BootStrap

                            </mainClass>

            </manifest>

            <manifestEntries>

                 <Class-Path>. lib</Class-Path>

        </manifestEntries>

        </archive>

    </configuration>

</plugin>

 a. Use “classpathPrefix” to specify folder name in which all properties will be placed.
b. Use “Class-Path” to specify the folder. “.” Indicate current folder, while “lib” specifies “lib” folder in same directory as JAR (I have used lib).
4. Changes in spring application-context.xml
a. Add line to look for property file in declared class path

<context:property-placeholderlocation="classpath*:**/settings.properties, classpath*:**/usat.properties” />

b. Add line to import resources from class path

<importresource="classpath*:**/dao-config.xml"/> 

This is all which is needed. Run maven target as –X clean install and it should Generate a lib folder