What is the difference between application.properties and application.yml? application.properties और application.yml में क्या अंतर है?

Both files configure a Spring Boot application externally, but application.properties uses flat key=value pairs, while application.yml uses YAML's indentation-based hierarchy, which reads more cleanly for nested and list-based configuration.

YAML also supports multiple profile documents in a single file separated by ---, whereas properties files typically need separate profile-specific files. Functionally they are equivalent and mapped to the same underlying Environment abstraction, so the choice is largely a readability and team-convention preference.

# application.yml
spring:
  datasource:
    url: jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/db
    username: root

# application.properties
spring.datasource.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/db
spring.datasource.username=root