Output several timestamps in ant - ant

Question

The Ant buildfile snippet below is an attempt to simply output the time before and after each sql script is run. I cannot change the structure of the Ant targets (create-tables must call run-sql-script just as it does). The problem is that the properties (time and time2) are immutable (http://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/property.html) and thus only time the first operation and not the second. Is there no way to do what I'm trying to do in Ant?
<target name="create-tables">
<antcall target="run-sql-script">
<param name="db.script" value="teams.sql"/>
</antcall>
<!-- Create the base UDM schema. -->
<antcall target="run-sql-script">
<param name="db.script" value="players.sql"/>
</antcall>
</target>
<target name="run-sql-script">
<tstamp>
<format property="time" pattern="MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss aa"
offset="-5" unit="hour"/>
</tstamp>
<echo>before: ${time}</echo>
<sql
classpath="${classpath}"
driver="${db.driver}"
url="${db.url}"
userid="${db.userid}"
password="${db.password}"
src="${script.dir}/${db.script}"
delimiter="${script.delimiter}"
onerror="abort">
</sql>
<tstamp>
<format property="time2" pattern="MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss aa"
offset="-5" unit="hour"/>
</tstamp>
<echo>after: ${time2}</echo>
</target>

Answer 1

Update: You can use an antcall to invoke a task, and create/echo a new timestamp within the scope of that call.
This example shows how to pass a message to the call and echo the current timestamp with a message:
<target name="timestamp2">
<tstamp>
<format property="current.time" pattern="MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss aa" />
</tstamp>
<echo message="${message} ${current.time}" />
</target>
<target name="test">
<antcall target="timestamp2">
<param name="message" value="hello" />
</antcall>
<sleep seconds="5"/>
<antcall target="timestamp2">
<param name="message" value="world" />
</antcall>
</target>
The output when this is run is:
test:
timestamp2:
[echo] hello 09/24/2009 05:33:22 PM
timestamp2:
[echo] world 09/24/2009 05:33:24 PM

Answer 2

Use a <macrodef> task together with the <local> task (introduced in Ant 1.8):
<macrodef name="echotimestamp">
<sequential>
<local name="timestamp" />
<tstamp>
<format property="timestamp" pattern="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss" />
</tstamp>
<echo message="${timestamp}" />
</sequential>
</macrodef>
<echotimestamp />

Answer 3

Following on from #Niek's answer, we can build a macro that behaves like echo but with a time stamp
<macrodef name="echoTS">
<attribute name="message"/>
<sequential>
<var name="current.time" unset="true"/>
<tstamp><format property="current.time" pattern="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss" /></tstamp>
<echo message="${current.time}> #{message}" />
</sequential>
</macrodef>
<target name="test-timestamp">
<echoTS message="hi" />
</target>
which will give output
test-timestamp:
[echo] 2013-05-03 12:02:38> hi

Answer 4

I like the macrodef solution if indeed it is more efficient than the target one, but I use a var unset=true to force a resetting of the variable, like:
<macrodef name="echoTimestamp">
<sequential>
<var name="current.time" unset="true"/>
<tstamp>
<format property="current.time" pattern="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss" />
</tstamp>
<echo message="${current.time}" />
</sequential>
</macrodef>
Usage
<echoTimestamp />
<sleep seconds="3"/>
<echoTimestamp />

Answer 5

I found that if you use it as a macro rather than an ant target, it works better since it doesn't loop thru the ant file from the beginning everytime you do a antcall target= (less check if you have dependencies and property sets).
<target name="testMe">
<MyTimestamp></MyTimestamp>
<sleep seconds="5"></sleep>
<MyTimestamp></MyTimestamp>
</target>
<macrodef name="MyTimestamp">
<sequential >
<tstamp>
<format property="current.time" pattern="MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss aa"/>
</tstamp>
<echo message="RUN_TIME: ${current.time}"/>
</sequential>
</macrodef>