Running Ant using Java..

[mjahabarsadiq]

Hi,

I have written a java code to execute ant targets via Servlet. I have given the code below.

import org.apache.tools.ant.*;
import org.apache.catalina.ant.*;
.
.
.
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public void antTest()
{
    BuildLogger logger = new DefaultLogger();
    logger.setMessageOutputLevel(Project.MSG_INFO);
    logger.setOutputPrintStream(System.out);
    logger.setErrorPrintStream(System.out);
    logger.setEmacsMode(true);
 
    ProjectHelper ph = ProjectHelper.getProjectHelper();
    Project p = new Project();
    p.addBuildListener(logger);
    p.init();
    p.addReference("ant.projectHelper", ph);
    ph.parse(p, new File(sctx.getRealPath("/")+"bin/build.xml"));
    p.executeTarget("display");
}

The build.xml file is as follows.

<project name="Web Application" default="display" basedir=".">
    <property file="${user.home}/build.properties"/>
 
    <property file="build.properties"/>
 
    <target name="init">
        <tstamp/>
    </target>
 
    <target name="display" description="Deletes the Web Application's war directory and war file">
        <echo message="This line is displaying from ant target ..."/>
    </target>
 
</project>

When the method antTest() is invoked, I got the following output.

This line is displaying from ant target ...

When I executed the build.xml using the command prompt (i.e. using the command "ant -f build.xml display"), I got the following output.

Buildfile: build.xml
Trying to override old definition of datatype resources
 
display:
     [echo] This line is displaying from ant target ...
 
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 0 seconds

I would like to have the following.

1) I expect the output from the java code should also display the same lines as in the output from command prompt. Please let me know the way to do so.

2) I want to log the output of the ant target to a log file when executing from java.

3) Is there any other way to run ant targets as we are running from the command prompt. That is if we have a string variable having the value "ant -f build.xml display", we could have to make this as the command to execute ant target. Is this possible? If so please let me know the way to implement.

[mjahabarsadiq]

Is anyone having solution for this??

[chaarmann]

If you want the exact output from Ant as if running it from command line, then why don't you run it from command line through java then?

Here I wrote a function where you need to pass the command and working directory only and you get back the output from this command as a string result. Then you can save this result to a log file.

In your case, call it with

 
executeShell("ant -f build.xml display", "c:\\myAntInstallationDirectory\\bin")
 

 
 /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 
 public static final String executeShell(String command, String dir)
 throws Exception
 {
  Runtime runtime = Runtime.getRuntime();
  String output="";
  try 
  {
   File fileDir = new File(dir);
   Process process = runtime.exec(command, null, fileDir);
   BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(process.getInputStream()));
 
   // Read the output
   String line = null;
   while ((line = in.readLine()) != null)
   {
    output += line + "\n";
   }
  }
  catch (Exception exception)
  {
   throw new Exception("[EXCEPTION in RuntimeUtils.executeShell()] : output of shell-command '" + command + "' = '" + output + "'. Exception=" + exception);
  }
 
  return output;
 }
 

[isomania]

Hi chaarmann,

I've tried your solution but instead I got this error:

[EXCEPTION in RuntimeUtils.executeShell()] : output of shell-command 'ant -f build.xml display' = ''. Exception=java.io.IOException: Cannot run program "ant" (in directory "X:\build.xml"): CreateProcess error=2, The system cannot find the file specified

The file is there and it can be run through command line. Any idea?

Thanks

[mouli82]

Try below

cmd = new String[] { "sh", "-c", "PATH=/ant binaries path","ant -buildfile","Your ant build file args..."}

p = r4.exec(cmd);

[mouli82]

for logs use the Record option to document the Target out put

[mouli82]

<target name="ftp_record" >
<echo message="Started Recording .."/>

<record name="C:\App\logs\${ftp.user}_ftp_log.txt" action="start" append="no"/>
</target>