spring - <context:property-placeholder> properties not accessible to the child (web) context

Question

A typical use-case: I'm having applicationContext.xml and dispatcher-servlet.xml. In the parent context (applicationContext.xml) I have:

 <context:property-placeholder location="classpath:application.properties" />

However, the properties loaded by it are not accessible to the web context - neither in xml, nor using @Value. (They are just not resolved and the expression (${varName}) is set as value instead)

I worked it around by adding the <context:property-placeholder> to dispatcher-servlet.xml as well, but I wondered whether:

1. This is expected behaviour
2. There isn't a better way to expose the properties to the child context.

Answer 1

Yes, this is an expected behaviour. <context:property-placeholder> creates a BeanFactoryPostProcessor which is applied at per-context basis. So, you'll need a postprocessor in the child context anyway.