Can some one help me to understand this syntax on this ActiveMQConnectionFactory bean ? What are the 3 options for? what is the logic?
DU_MESSAGING_SERVER_URL (system param on our system) MESSAGING_SERVER_URL (system param on our system) tcp://localhost:61917
<property name="brokerURL" value="${DU_MESSAGING_SERVER_URL:${MESSAGING_SERVER_URL:tcp://localhost:61917}}"/>
This syntax using ${} is for loading system or environmental properties into a configuration file.
This is useful in situations where you might not want to modify the configuration file but rather just set a system property (e.g. moving between a test environment and prod). You just put the name of the system property in the configuration file and the value of that property will be substituted when the configuration is loaded. For example, you could use ${foo} in your config file and then define this system property -Dfoo=bar and then the value bar would be used in your config file.
The : character defines a default value if the system property is not set. For example, you could use ${foo:defaultFoo} in your config file and then if the foo system property was not defined then the value defaultFoo would be used in your config file.
In your situation these ideads are being nested together. So if you use ${DU_MESSAGING_SERVER_URL:${MESSAGING_SERVER_URL:tcp://localhost:61917}} then the value of the DU_MESSAGING_SERVER_URL system property will be used in the configuration. If DU_MESSAGING_SERVER_URL is not defined then ${MESSAGING_SERVER_URL:tcp://localhost:61917} will be evaluated which will use the value of the MESSAGING_SERVER_URL system property in the configuration. If MESSAGING_SERVER_URL is not defined then tcp://localhost:61917 will be used.