Integrating AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store with a Spring Boot Application

AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store allows you to store data such as passwords, database strings, AMI IDs, etc as parameter values in plain text or encryped data format. It is similar to AWS Secrets Manager. However, if you need built-in password generator and automated secret rotation, then you should go for AWS Secrets Manager.

Supposing you have a parameter name /config/demoapp/backend_dev/welcome.message and the value is TEST123, you want to take this value from AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store instead of retrieving from application.properties.

To integrate it with a Spring Boot Application, you need to add the dependency in your pom.xml. Make sure you are using Spring Cloud 2.x (Greenwich).

<dependency>
  <groupid>org.springframework.cloud</groupid>
  <artifactid>spring-cloud-starter-aws-parameter-store-config</artifactid>
  <version>2.1.3.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

Then we need to modify bootstrap.properties to configure the bootstrap context.

aws.paramstore.prefix=<your_parameter_store_prefix>
aws.paramstore.name=<your_spring_application_name>
aws.paramstore.enabled=<true_or_false>
aws.paramstore.profileSeparator=<[a-zA-Z0-9.\-_/]+>

For example,

aws.paramstore.prefix=/config/demoapp
aws.paramstore.name=backend
aws.paramstore.enabled=true
aws.paramstore.profileSeparator=_ 

In your application.properties

aws.region=ap-east-1
spring.application.name=backend
spring.profiles.active=dev
server.port=8080

In your Controller, use @Value annotation to inject the value.

@Value("${welcome.message}")
 private String message;

Setup your AWS credential

[default]
aws_access_key_id = your_access_key_id
aws_secret_access_key = your_secret_access_key

Follow the below code and run the application to test it

package com.demo;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Value;
import org.springframework.boot.CommandLineRunner;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;


@SpringBootApplication
public class StartWebApplication {
    @Value("${welcome.message}")
    private String message;

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(StartWebApplication.class, args);
    }
    @Bean
    public CommandLineRunner commandLineRunner(ApplicationContext ctx) {
        return args -> {
            System.out.println("Message from AWS Parameter Store: " + message);
        };
    }
}

Message from AWS Parameter Store: TEST123