Get command-line arguments from spring-boot:run

Question

Is there any way to input arguments when launching spring-boot application (mvn spring-boot:run) from commandline and then get them in main()?

Answer 1

Spring Boot 1 as 2 provide a way to pass multiple profiles as argument and avoid the issue related to the comma used both as separator between the args and the values passed as active profile.

So instead of writing :

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.arguments=--spring.profiles.active=test,--spring.profiles.active=dev

use the Spring Boot Maven profiles property that is a convenience shortcut of spring.profiles.active such as the followings :

The Maven user property is different according to the Spring Boot version.

For Spring Boot 1.4+, that is run.profiles :

mvn spring-boot:run -Drun.profiles=dev,test

For Spring Boot 2, that is spring-boot.run.profiles :

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.profiles=dev,test

From the plugin documentation :

profiles:

The spring profiles to activate. Convenience shortcut of specifying the 'spring.profiles.active' argument. On command line use commas to separate multiple profiles.

Type: java.lang.String[]

Since: 1.3

Required: No

User Property: spring-boot.run.profiles

Answer 2

Be aware : The way of passing arguments depends on the spring-boot major version.

TLDR

For Spring Boot 1 :

mvn spring-boot:run -Drun.arguments="argOne,argTwo"

For Spring Boot 2 :

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.arguments="argOne,argTwo"

---

1) spring-boot-maven-plugin version and the the Spring Boot version you use has to be aligned.

According to the Spring Boot major version used (1 or 2), the spring-boot-maven-plugin in the 1 or the 2 version should indeed be used.
If your pom.xml inherits from the spring-boot-starter-parent :

<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>ONE_OR_TWO_VERSION</version>
</parent>

In your pom, the version of the plugin used should not even be specified as this plugin dependency is inherited :

<plugins>
    <plugin>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>                   
        <configuration>
           ...
        </configuration>
    </plugin>
</plugins>

In case of your pom.xml not inheriting from spring-boot-starter-parent, don't forget to align the version of spring-boot-maven-plugin with the exact version of spring boot you want to use.

2) Passing arguments in command line with spring-boot-maven-plugin:1.X.X

For one argument :

mvn spring-boot:run -Drun.arguments="argOne"

for multiple :

mvn spring-boot:run -Drun.arguments="argOne,argTwo"

The maven plugin page documents it :

  Name         Type       Since           Description
arguments  |  String[]  |  1.0  | Arguments that should be passed 
                                  to the application. On command line use 
                                  commas to separate multiple arguments.
                                  User property is: run.arguments.

3) Passing arguments in command line with spring-boot-maven-plugin:2.X.X

For one argument :

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.arguments="argOne"

for multiple :

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.arguments="argOne,argTwo"

I didn't find the plugin documentation for the 2.X.X version that refers to that.
But the org.springframework.boot.maven.AbstractRunMojo class of the spring-boot-maven-plugin:2.0.0.M3 plugin refers to this user property:

public abstract class AbstractRunMojo extends AbstractDependencyFilterMojo
   ...
   @Parameter(property="spring-boot.run.arguments")
   private String[] arguments;
   ...
   protected RunArguments resolveApplicationArguments(){
     RunArguments runArguments = new RunArguments(this.arguments);
     addActiveProfileArgument(runArguments);
     return runArguments;
   }
   ...
 }

4) Hint : as you pass more than one argument, whitespaces between commas are considered.

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.arguments="argOne,argTwo"

will be interpreted as ["argOne", "argTwo"]

But this :

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring-boot.run.arguments="argOne, argTwo"

will be interpreted as ["argOne", " argTwo"]

Answer 3

Looking at the source code of the spring-boot-maven-plugin I found that you need to do:

mvn spring-boot:run -Drun.arguments="arg1,arg2"

Another way to get more information about what options the run goal of the spring-boot plugin supports is to execute the following command:

mvn help:describe -Dcmd=spring-boot:run -Ddetail

For Spring Boot 2.x, the source is here and you now need to use -Dspring-boot.run.arguments="args1,args2"

If you are using Gradle and you want to be able to pass command line arguments to the Gradle bootRun task, you first need to configure, for example like so:

bootRun {
    if ( project.hasProperty('args') ) {
        args project.args.split('\\s+')
    }
}

and run the task using gradle bootRun -Pargs="arg1 arg2"

Answer 4

When passing multiple arguments using -Drun.arguments, if the argument in turn has 'comma-separated' values, then only the first value of each argument is used. To avoid this repeat the argument as many times as the number of values.

This is more of a workaround. Not sure if there is an alternative unless the delimiter is different - like '|'.

E.g Issue:

mvn spring-boot:run -Drun.arguments="--spring.profiles.active=test,dev"

Picks only 'test' profile for the above command.

Workaround:

mvn spring-boot:run -Drun.arguments="--spring.profiles.active=test,--spring.profiles.active=dev"

Picks both 'dev' & 'test' profiles for the above command.

Answer 5

This is what worked for me (spring-boot v1.4.3.RELEASE),.

mvn spring-boot:run -Dspring.profiles.active=test,local -Dlogback-debug=true

Answer 6

And if you're using Eclipse...

| Parameter Name | Value         |
| run.arguments  | "--name=Adam" |