editing the xml using ant task - ant

Question

I was trying to edit the my config.xml file using ant task but I could not do that can anybody tell me How can I edit the xml using ant task automatically so that i dont need to change it manually for every new branch?

Answer 1

The first option to check would be the Ant xslt task. For an introduction to its use see the Ant/XSLT Wikibook.

Answer 2

I've used groovy to do this. groovy is very Java like, so you can create your groovy classes very similarly to a static java method, and have ant call out to your groovy script using the <groovy> task (you will of course need to include the groovy task def).
Because groovy can use Java syntax you can include the org.w3c.com.* libraries to have access to DOM classes.
For example, snippet of code showing the adding a resource ref element to a specifed web.xml file :-
import org.w3c.dom.*;
String web_xml_filename=args[0];
String res_ref_name=args[1];
Document doc = DomHelper.getDoc(web_xml_filename);
Element rootNode=doc.getDocumentElement();
newNode = doc.createElement("resource-ref");
DomHelper.createElement(doc, newNode, "res-ref-name", res_ref_name);
DomHelper.createElement(doc, newNode, "res-type", "javax.sql.DataSource");
DomHelper.createElement(doc, newNode, "description", description);
DomHelper.createElement(doc, newNode, "res-auth", "Container");
rootNode.insertBefore(newNode, nodes.item(0));
DomHelper.writeDoc(doc, web_xml_filename, false);
To call from ant, use the groovy task :-
<groovy src="${e5ahr-groovy.dir}/addResoureRefToJBossWebXML.groovy" classpath="${groovy.dir}">
<arg value="${jboss-web.xml}"/>
<arg value="jdbc/somesource/>
<arg value="java:jdbc/somesource"/>
</groovy>

Answer 3

You can use ReplaceRegExp. Pattern and Expression options won't let you use less than or more than, but it can be replaced with HTML entities. For example:
<replaceregexp byline="true">
<!-- In config.xml this looks like <myVariable></myVariable> -->
<regexp pattern="<myVariable>(.*)</myVariable>" />
<substitution expression="<myVariable>${myVariable.value}</myVariable>" />
<fileset dir="${user.dir}">
<include name="config.xml" />
</fileset>
</replaceregexp>