Section 9.2. Loading Properties from XML Files

9.2. Loading Properties from XML Files

The xmlproperty task loads property values from a well-formed XML file. The way you structure the XML document determines the names of the properties it creates.

Say you have this XML document, properties.xml, that defines a property named name1, and two nested properties, firstName and lastName, creating the properties name1.firstName and name1.lastName:

<name1 language="english">     <firstName language="german">Stefan</firstName>     <lastName>Edwards</lastName> </name1>

You can load these properties into a build with the xmlproperty task, as shown in Example 9-3. This build file displays the values of the properties created by properties.xml, name1.firstName, and name1.lastName. This example defines attributes for the name1 and firstName properties, creating an attribute named language which can be accessed as name1(language) and as name1.firstName(language). The build file displays the values of these properties.

Example 9-3. Loading XML properties (ch09/xmlproperty/build.xml)

<?xml version="1.0" ?> <project default="main">    <xmlproperty file="properties.xml" />     <target name="main">         <echo>             ${name1(language)}             ${name1.firstName}             ${name1.firstName(language)}             ${name1.lastName}         </echo>     </target>    </project>

Here's what the build file displays when run:

%ant Buildfile: build.xml main:      [echo]      [echo]             english      [echo]             Stefan      [echo]             german      [echo]             Edward      [echo] BUILD SUCCESSFUL Total time: 0 seconds

The attributes of this task appear in Table 9-5.

Table 9-5. The xmlproperty task's attributes

Attribute	Description	Required	Default
collapseAttributes	Specifies you want to treat attributes as nested elements	No	false
file	Specifies the XML file you want to parse for properties	Yes
includeSemanticAttribute	Specifies you want to include the semantic attribute name as part of the property name	No	false
keepRoot	Specifies you want to make the XML root tag the first value in the property name	No	true
prefix	Specifies the prefix to prepend to each property automatically	No
rootDirectory	Specifies the root directory to search for files	No	${basedir}
semanticAttributes	Specifies you want to use semantic handling of attribute names	No	false
validate	Specifies you want to validate the input file	No	false