Programmatically restart Spring Boot application / Refresh Spring Context

Question

I am trying to programmatically restart my Spring Application without having the user to intervene.

Basically, I have a page which allows to switch the mode of the a

Answer 1

As was commented already, the restart-via-thread implementations given before only work once, and second time around throw a NPE because context is null.

This NPE can be avoided by having the restart thread use the same class loader as the initial main-invoking thread:

private static volatile ConfigurableApplicationContext context;
private static ClassLoader mainThreadClassLoader;

public static void main(String[] args) {
    mainThreadClassLoader = Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader();
    context = SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}

public static void restart() {
    ApplicationArguments args = context.getBean(ApplicationArguments.class);

    Thread thread = new Thread(() -> {
        context.close();
        context = SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args.getSourceArgs());
    });

    thread.setContextClassLoader(mainThreadClassLoader);
    thread.setDaemon(false);
    thread.start();
}