How can I in a jsp page get maven project version number?

Question

I am working on a java web application, managed by maven2. From time to time, we did some changes, and want to do new releases, of course with new version number. In the hom

Answer 1

I wanted to do this very same thing but I was not satisfied with any of the existing solutions, including using the Maven filtering approach, which is ok, but I am trying to move away from modifying existing code files during the build process so I ruled that approach out, although it is a reasonable approach.

The way I get my Maven project version into my JSP file is based on a similar approach to the one from here except that I don't create a Version.java file, instead I just have Maven write the version out to a properties file, such as "version.properties" like this:

version.properties:

app.version = 0.1

and have Maven put it on the classpath, for instance, in src/main/resources like this:

    
    org.apache.maven.plugins
    maven-antrun-plugin
    1.7
    
          
            
              run
            
            generate-sources
            
            
              
                
                
                
                
                
              
            
          
        
  

Also, if you are using Spring Framework 3.x+ then you can add the following configuration to load properties in version.properties if it exists, otherwise just show "v0.0" or whatever:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@EnableAspectJAutoProxy(proxyTargetClass = true)
public class WebHomeConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter implements
    ApplicationContextAware {

  private ApplicationContext _appContext;


  /*
   * (non-Javadoc)
   * 
   * @see
   * org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextAware#setApplicationContext
   * (org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext)
   */
  @Override
  public void setApplicationContext(ApplicationContext appContext)
      throws BeansException {
    _appContext = appContext;
  }

  @Bean
  public ViewResolver getViewResolver() {
    InternalResourceViewResolver resolver = new InternalResourceViewResolver();
    resolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/views/");
    resolver.setSuffix(".jsp");
    resolver.getAttributesMap().put("appVersion", appVersion);
    return resolver;
  }


  /**
   * Since we don't have any controller logic, simpler to just define
   * controller for page using View Controller. Note: had to extend
   * WebMvcConfigurerAdapter to get this functionality
   * 
   * @param registry
   */
  @Override
  public void addViewControllers(ViewControllerRegistry registry) {
    registry.addViewController("/").setViewName("home");
  }

  /**
   * The application version.
   */
  @Value("${app.version:0.0}")
  protected String appVersion;

  @Bean
  public static PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer configurer() {
    PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer configurer = new PropertySourcesPlaceholderConfigurer();

    configurer.setIgnoreResourceNotFound(true);
    configurer.setLocations(new Resource[] {
        new ClassPathResource("version.properties")});
    return configurer;
  }

}

And finally, in your /WEB-INF/views/home.jsp you can have something like:

<%@page contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>



    
        
        
    
    
        
Service API
        
The service is up and running! (v${appVersion})
    

And this would of course render as:

The service is up and running! (v0.1)

NOTE: If you don't use the JavaConfig classes to configure Spring Framework then you can do the same thing with Spring XML configuration.