I have gone through several books and countless Blogs to try to get a valid working WAR that would access my external configuration files, both .properties and .groovy files.

First, I have read through the online Grails documentation, ‘Grails In Action’, as well as the following Blogs:

http://www.comitservices.com/wp/?p=133

http://phatness.com/2010/03/how-to-externalize-your-grails-configuration/

http://blog.zmok.net/articles/2009/04/22/playing-with-grails-application-configuration

The online docs did not work at all for me.

The blogs all seemed straight forward, but again, they did not fully work for me.

I wanted a way that  external configuration could be specified in order:

1. From Command Line
2. System Environment Property
3. $USER_HOME\.grails

I thought this would be easy, but I actually spent the better part of 6 hours to get this correct.

Here is what I ended up with:

def ENV_NAME = "${appName}.config.location"
if (!grails.config.locations || !(grails.config.locations instanceof List)) {
    grails.config.locations = []
}
println "--------------------------------------------------------"
// 1: A command line option should override everything.
// Test by running:
// grails -Ddivr.config.location=C:\temp\divr-config.groovy run-app
// or
// grails -Ddivr.config.location=C:\temp\divr-config.properties run-app
if (System.getProperty(ENV_NAME) && new File(System.getProperty(ENV_NAME)).exists()) {
    println "Including configuration file specified on command line: " + System.getProperty(ENV_NAME)
    grails.config.locations << "file:" + System.getProperty(ENV_NAME)
}
// 2: If this is a developer machine, then they will have their own config and
//    I should use that.
else if (new File("${userHome}/.grails/${appName}-config.groovy").exists()) {
        println "*** User defined config: file:${userHome}/.grails/${appName}-config.groovy. ***"
        grails.config.locations = ["file:${userHome}/.grails/${appName}-config.groovy"]
}
// 3: Most QA and PROD machines should define a System Environment variable
//    that will define where we should look.
else if (System.getenv(ENV_NAME) && new File(System.getenv(ENV_NAME)).exists()) {
    println("Including System Environment configuration file: " + System.getenv(ENV_NAME))
    grails.config.locations << "file:" + System.getenv(ENV_NAME)
}
// 4: Last resort is looking for a properties based configuration on the developer
//    machine.
else if (new File("${userHome}/.grails/${appName}-config.properties").exists()) {
        println "*** User defined config: file:${userHome}/.grails/${appName}-config.properties. ***"
        grails.config.locations = ["file:${userHome}/.grails/${appName}-config.properties"]
}
// 5: Houston, we have a problem!
else {
        println "*** No external configuration file defined. ***"
        println "*** No external configuration file defined. ***"
        println "*** No external configuration file defined. ***"
}

println "(*) grails.config.locations = ${grails.config.locations}"
println "--------------------------------------------------------"

Hope this helps anyone having the same issue.

1. Tweets that mention Getting Grails external configuration working in the real world. | BASE Logic, Inc. -- Topsy.com Says:
   April 12th, 2010 at 6:27 pm

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2. links for 2010-06-01 | andy.edmonds.be Says:
   June 1st, 2010 at 4:05 pm

   [...] Getting Grails external configuration working in the real world. | BASE Logic, Inc. (tags: grails configuration external) [...]

3. blackorangebox Says:
   June 12th, 2010 at 11:44 pm

   Thanks for the real-life configuration!

   This code should reside in Config.groovy, right?

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4. blackorangebox Says:
   June 12th, 2010 at 11:48 pm

   Works perfectly! Thanks=)

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5. Blog bookmarks 08/11/2010 « My Diigo bookmarks Says:
   August 10th, 2010 at 9:36 pm

   [...] Getting Grails external configuration working in the real world. | BASE Logic, Inc. [...]

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