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How to externalize properties file for web application(war)?

I have developed a webapplication which is having jsp and java code. Right now I have placed all the key-value into a env/lifecycle specific properties file (like conf-dev.properties,conf-stg.properties,conf-prod.properties).
I want to externalize these properties file so that it can be placed outside of war(without effecting the war).
right now war file is tightly coupled with properties file. if i have to modify any thing i have to build and make war and deploy.
I have very limited access on deployment server machine (only have access for one folder where i can put my configuration files) & deployment process is handled by CI(jenkin & automated script).
I explored on internet and came to know that we can achieve this using spring, would like to know what is the best way to achieve this?

As you are using Spring I suppose you already use PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer. If not you should ;)
The location of a property file can be anything that can be resolved as spring Resource. This includes classpath, servletcontext and also file references as URIs (file:///... For absolute paths)
https://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/javadoc-api/org/springframework/beans/factory/config/PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer.html
<bean id="propertyConfigurer" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="location" value="${config.file.location}" />
</bean>

If I understand your question, then you can use Class.getResourceAsStream(String) the linked Javadoc says (in part)
This method delegates to this object's class loader. If this object was loaded by the bootstrap class loader, the method delegates to ClassLoader.getSystemResourceAsStream(java.lang.String).

The better way to externalize env specific properties is to use "user.home" or "user.dir".

Thanks #Martin F..
Resolved:This is the final one i used and its working fine in dev,stage Env.
<bean id="propertyConfigurer" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="ignoreUnresolvablePlaceholders" value="false"/>
<property name="order" value="1"/>
<property name="locations">
<list>
<value>classpath:conf-${cisco.life}.properties</value>
<value>file:///${openshift.home}/data/conf-${cisco.life}.properties</value>
<value>file:${openshift.home}/data/conf-${cisco.life}.properties</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>.
and i used script action hook in openshift to set the lifecycle on system level.
appname=echo $OPENSHIFT_APP_NAME
case "$appname" in
*dev)export JAVA_OPTS_EXT="${JAVA_OPTS_EXT} -Dcisco.life=dev";
echo "setting up env life dev for " $appname
;;
*stage)export JAVA_OPTS_EXT="${JAVA_OPTS_EXT} -Dcisco.life=stg;
echo "setting up env life as stg for " $appname.

Tomcat H2 deployment

I have 2 situations.
hibernate.cfg:
<property name="connection.url">jdbc:log4jdbc:h2:./H2/test</property>
<property name="connection.driver_class">net.sf.log4jdbc.sql.jdbcapi.DriverSpy</property>
<property name="connection.username">user</property>
<property name="connection.password">password</property>
<property name="dialect">org.hibernate.dialect.H2Dialect</property>
H2 db is in my project near my src folder. If I try to test connection from simple class it works. It connects to the db that is in the right place in project folder.
Now I'm making new configuration to launch tomcat + servlets. All is fine, but tomcat creates new H2 database in his folder: (apache-tomcat-8.0.17\bin\H2\test.mv.db). Is it possible to make tomcat to take (to use) my test.mv.db from my project's folder ?
If I put my test.mv.db manualy from project into tomcat's dir - it is working (I'm not using "sa" with blank password). I don't want to place h2 db into user's folder like jdbc:h2:~/test).
Thank you.

You should append the hibernate prefix to all your properties.
Try giving H2 an absolute path to your database folder:
<property name="hibernate.connection.url">jdbc:h2:file:/your-project-path/test-db</property>
I don't think the Driver class setting is correct either. It should be:
<property name="hibernate.connection.driver_class" value="org.h2.Driver" />

Apache Tiles + White spaces in folder path

I'm currently working on a project involving Apache Tiles, but ran into the following problem. The project folder has (a or multiple) white space(s) in the path name.
C:\Users\MyUsername\Documents\Dropbox\Subfolder\My Projects\GymApp
Now, to my surprise, when I use Apache Tiles it tries to load the tile-definition.xml from the following location:
C:\Users\MyUsername\Documents\Dropbox\Subfolder\My%20Projects\GymApp\src\main\webapp\WEB-INF\configurations\tile-definition.xml
So the problem lies in the part where tool X tries to convert all white spaces to %20 (URL encoding), where tool X being: Windows, Java, Tomcat, Spring or Apache Tiles. Because of this Apache Tiles cannot load the file, since the file does not exist (if I try to open the URL in Windows explorer it gives me the error that the file does not exist, same thing shows up in the console log of my IDE).
As for my question, is it possible to have an Apache Tiles project running in a folder which contains white spaces? If so, how is this done?
Note*: If I change the folder name of My Projects to My_Projects the project runs without any errors, so I know that the folder path is at fault here.
-- Edit --
I use this code to configure the tilesConfigurer
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver">
<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.TilesView" />
</bean>
<bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.TilesConfigurer">
<property name="definitions" value="/WEB-INF/configurations/tiles.xml" />
</bean>
-- Edit 2 --
This is what my IDE log shows:
DEBUG BaseLocaleUrlDefinitionDAO:154 - File Resource file:/C:/Users/MyUsername/Documents/Dropbox/Subfolder/My%20Projects/GymApp/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/configurations/tiles.xml at file:/C:/Users/MyUsername/Documents/Dropbox/Subfolder/My%20Projects/GymApp/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/configurations/tiles.xml not found, continue
DEBUG BaseLocaleUrlDefinitionDAO:154 - File Resource file:/C:/Users/MyUsername/Documents/Dropbox/Subfolder/My%20Projects/GymApp/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/configurations/tiles_en.xml at file:/C:/Users/MyUsername/Documents/Dropbox/Subfolder/My%20Projects/GymApp/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/configurations/tiles_en.xml not found, continue
DEBUG TestDispatcherServlet:938 - Could not complete request
javax.servlet.ServletException: Could not resolve view with name 'home' in servlet with name ''

Do you use context-relative paths when specifying your tilesConfigurer bean? Because if you do that, it shouldn't matter if your project folder contains spaces.
I have the following code in my dispatcher-servlet.xml:
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver">
<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.TilesView" />
</bean>
<bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.TilesConfigurer">
<property name="definitions">
<list>
<value>/WEB-INF/tiles/config/template-definitions.xml</value>
<value>/WEB-INF/tiles/config/page-definitions.xml</value>
</list>
</property>
</bean>
...and even if my project folder contains a space, Tiles still finds the definition-xml.

I know that this is an old thread but it wasn't marked as solved and I had a similar problem and maybe this will help other people.
With the Tomcat parallel deploy when you add ##2 to specify the war version, that will be expanded into a folder with the same(including the # chars) and those are escaped to %23 which had the same result - tiles.xml couldn't be loaded.
To solve this I override the URLApplicationResource class, and in both constructors instead of
file = new File(url.getPath());
I used
file = new File(url.toURI());

How to load a file as a context parameter value in a Tomcat/Java/Spring application?

I'm using my context.xml file to set init parameters for my java application, for example:
<Parameter
name="Environment"
description="The environment in which this code is running (e.g. Production, Staging, Development)."
value="Production"/>
I would like to be able to create a parameter who's value attribute is loading from a file. Is there anyway to do this? Should I be using a < Resource > element instead? If so, how do I setup a resource to load the contents of a file? I've tried Google, but I my not understand the context.xml file well enough to know what to look for. Any help is much appreciated!

In application-context.xml add this element
<context:property-placeholder ignore-unresolvable="true" location="classpath*:application.properties"/>
In the file application.properties you can define parameters like this
userName=root
password=123
And then you can use the parameters by this way
<property name="username" value="${userName}"/>
<property name="password" value="${password}"/>

log4j log file relative path, CONSOLE APPLICATION(jar)

I'm using Spring in a Console java application. I'm using PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer to load database details, and it works flawlessly:
<bean id="propertyConfigurer" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
<property name="location" value="file:/appdata/configs/myapplication/connection.properties" />
</bean>
So the root dir will be relative to where the jar is located. I need the same functionality with log4j.properties
log4j.appender.file.File=/appdata/configs/myapplication/myapplication-log.log
How can I achieve this without defining environment variables?

Just tried it like this:
log4j.appender.file.File=\\appdata\\configs\\myapplication\\myapplication-log.log
And it works fine.