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.