Apache Ant: how to execute target inside condition with specific data from XmlProperty

<item>
 <property name="someId" selected="true"></property>
 <property name="someId2"></property>
</item>

this is my XmlProperty file, now my target need to imple开发者_StackOverflowmented only the property with the selected attribute, i don't know any way to access to property by index with ApacheAnt or run with foreach & index on XmlProperty.

thx:)

---

Would it help to restructure your XML properties definition so you can access the properties by name.

Restructured XML properties:

<item>
 <someId selected="true"/>
 <someId2/>
</item>

Build file:

<project default="conditionals">

  <xmlproperty file="properties.xml" keepRoot="false" collapseAttributes="true"/>

  <target name="conditionals" depends="ifSomeId, ifSomeId2"/>

  <target name="ifSomeId" if="someId.selected">
    <echo message="in ifSomeId"/>
  </target>

  <target name="ifSomeId2" if="someId2.selected">
    <echo message="in ifSomeId2"/>
  </target>

</project>

Output:

$ ant
Buildfile: build.xml

ifSomeId:
     [echo] in ifSomeId

ifSomeId2:

conditionals:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 0 seconds

---

You could load the properties file in ant through a filter chain which excludes properties which do not have have the selected="true" attribute.

---

the situation is difference in my case, i have one tag called settings and he contain 10 times the tag project, like array of items, now i'm not interested on checking every on of the projects, i want to slice or just access to specific one by index or something similar, this is my current solution right now.

 <target name="GetSettings">
    <echo message="Getting settings for compiling"></echo>
    <loadfile srcfile="Settings.xml" property="settings">
      <filterchain>
        <linecontains>
          <contains value="selected"></contains>
        </linecontains>
      </filterchain>
    </loadfile>
    <echo message="${settings}" file="temp.xml"></echo>
    <xmlproperty file="temp.xml" collapseAttributes="true"></xmlproperty>
    <delete file="temp.xml"></delete>
  </target>

not perfect but work great.

---

For Ant scripts driven by a xmlproperty file you should use the power of Xpath. With the assistance of the xmltask (recommended for all xml related parts in your workflow) you may go like that =

your xmlpropertyfile somefile.xml =

<item>
 <property name="someId" selected="true"></property>
 <property name="someId2"></property>
</item>

examplescript with xmltask using xpath, for every match, the referenced target 'sometarget' is called =

 <project default="main">

 <taskdef name="xmltask" classname="com.oopsconsultancy.xmltask.ant.XmlTask"/>

 <target name="main">
  <xmltask source="somefile.xml">
   <call path="/item/property[@selected='true']" target="sometarget">
    <param name="name" path="@name"/>
   </call>
  </xmltask>
 </target>

 <target name="sometarget">

   <echo>${name}</echo>

 </target>

</project>

output =

[echo]     someId

some resources for xpath =

1. XPath Tutorial : http://zvon.org/xxl/XPathTutorial/General/examples.html
2. Eclipse Plugin for evaluating XPath expressions : XPath Developer
3. Tool to evaluate xpath expressions : XPathExplorer