Professional Java Tools for Extreme Programming [Electronic resources]

Putting it All Together

Now, to put all this information together, we will programmatically create a project, give it a single target and task, and call execute() on it. Using our task GreetJon from the description of the Task class, we will build a task that can be executed using its own Main() method.

The project file is as follows:

import org.apache.tools.ant.*;
public class ChapterAntProject extends org.apache.tools.ant.Project{
public ChapterAntProject(){
super.init();
}
public static void main(String[] args){
try{
/*
Create the Project object and add the custom Tag
*/
Project proj = new ChapterAntProject();
proj.setName("jonsProject");
GreetJon task = new GreetJon();
proj.addTaskDefinition("jonsTask", task.getClass());
/*
Create the Target Object as a child
of the project and add the Task to
it
*/
Target targ = new Target();
targ.setName("jonsTarget");
targ.addTask(task);
proj.addTarget("jonsTarget",targ);
proj.setDefaultTarget("jonsTarget");
/*
Execute the Target
*/
proj.executeTarget("jonsTarget");
}
catch(Exception e){
e.printStackTrace();
throw new BuildException("An error occurred while building and running your custom task",e);

}
}
}

The task file is as follows:

import org.apache.tools.ant.*;
public class GreetJon extends Task {
public GreetJon(){
;}
public void execute() throws BuildException{
System.out.println("Hello Zach!");
}
}

Running the project from a Java environment will produce output equivalent to the following Ant build.xml file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="jonsProject" basedir = "." default = "jonsTarget">
<target name="jonsTarget">
<taskdef name="jonsTask" classname="GreetJon"/>
</target>
</project>

This example is meant to be a simplified launching point from which you can build many custom tasks, projects, and targets to perform specific actions within the Ant framework.