Spring cloud-config-server has a built in mechanism to communicate with git repository and read files which are stored there. Then cloud-config-server also has built in mechanism to expose endpoints to clients (normally spring boot apps) which can read those files and use them as configurations.

This is well documented in spring documentation as can be seen from bellow.

According to doc

Spring Cloud Config Server

Spring Cloud Config Server provides an HTTP resource-based API for external configuration (name-value pairs or equivalent YAML content).

Also as documented about the serving format

Serving Alternative Formats

The default JSON format from the environment endpoints is perfect for consumption by Spring applications, because it maps directly onto the Environment abstraction. If you prefer, you can consume the same data as YAML or Java properties by adding a suffix (".yml", ".yaml" or ".properties") to the resource path. This can be useful for consumption by applications that do not care about the structure of the JSON endpoints or the extra metadata they provide (for example, an application that is not using Spring might benefit from the simplicity of this approach).

It can also support txt format

Serving Plain Text

Instead of using the Environment abstraction (or one of the alternative representations of it in YAML or properties format), your applications might need generic plain-text configuration files that are tailored to their environment.

But considering that spring cloud config server has the built in mechanism to communicate with a git repository and also exposes endpoints to the clients to consume the delivered files, it would make sense for other type of files to be able to be served from those endpoints as well.

It could be for example .pdf , .xslx , or even .zip

For example let's assume that the configured git repository contains the file myFile.zip in featureA branch. Then the call under the exposed path of type /{application}/{profile}[/{label}] for example as serverUrl:serverPort/myApp/default/featureA/myFile.zip is able to deliver the file but is always delivered as raw .txt file which then corrupts the content of the original file existing in git.

I have already found the solution, but invested many hours on it and it was strange that it was not documented in spring documentation. So it is probably good to exist here as well to spare some time from others having the same issue.

CodePudding user response：

As discussed under this issue, spring-cloud-config-server runs under the hood with the help of a normal spring-boot app. Considering that spring-boot has built in content negotiation mechanism it is able to consume and produce different content as well.

As for spring-cloud-config-server it is possible to fetch binary files from git as well as other files (ex zip, pdf, word, xlsx ...) if the call is made with the header Accept: application/octet-stream . This way the call to serverUrl:serverPort/myApp/default/featureA/myFile.zip is able to deliver a copy of the original file myFile.zip without any corruption.