propertiesfactorybean vs propertyplaceholderconfigurer spring？

Question

spring has two ways to load property files using either propertiesfactorybean or propertyplaceholderconfigurer .

Could u please explain the difference between them and when to use what?

Thanks!

Answer 1

PropertiesFactoryBean is a FactoryBean implementation which reads a properties file and exposes that as an Properties object in the applicationcontext.

PropertyPlaceHolderConfigurer is a BeanFactoryPostProcessor implementation that reads a property file and uses that property file to replace placeholder variables (${somename}) with actual values. The read properties aren't available as a Properties object.