Running Ant tasks from Java

let's face it, Ant is great but it's a pain in the butt when it comes to writing complex code, with variables, loops, conditions etc.

That's why I love the idea of running Ant tasks directly from Java.

Here is how.

The trick is to bear in mind the Ant object model: A Project contains Targets, a Target contains Tasks. A Task can't run without a Project, otherwise you get a NPE (my compliments to Ant developers for handling so gracefully this exception :o) ).

Of course you can build a "Ant Wrapper" framework on top of this paradygm...

package com.pierre.ant;

import java.io.File;

import org.apache.tools.ant.Project;

import org.apache.tools.ant.Target;

import org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.Copy;

public class AntRunner {

public static void main(String[] args) {

AntRunner runner = new AntRunner();

runner.scp();

}

/**

Copy file from a to b, locally

*/

public void scp() {

Project project = new Project();

Target target = new Target();

project.addTarget("ciao", target);

Copy scp = new Copy();

scp.setFile(new File("c:/tmp/vacations.xsd"));

scp.setTodir(new File("c:/temp"));

scp.setProject(project);

target.addTask(scp);

target.execute();

}

}