Question

I’d like to take text from a standard text file and insert it into an XML that is copied with replace tokens by Apache Ant. Is this possible?

Example (this is what I use so far):

<macrodef name="generateUpdateFile">
    <sequential>
        <echo message="Generating update file ..." level="info"/>
        <copy file="update.xml" tofile="${path.pub}/update.xml" overwrite="true">
            <filterchain>
                <replacetokens>
                    <token key="app_version" value="${app.version}"/>
                    <token key="app_updatenotes" value="${app.updatenotes}"/>
                </replacetokens>
            </filterchain>
        </copy>
    </sequential>
</macrodef>

The ${app.updatenotes} are currently a string that is defined in a build.properties file. But instead I’d like to write update notes in a simple text file and take them from there.

Answer 1

The apache ant loadfile task will allow to read your text file, and put its content into the app.updatenotes property.

You can simply use:

<loadresource property="app.updatenotes">
   <file file="notes.txt"/>
</loadresource>

Then, use your filterchain, just as before.
loadresource has some options, for instance to control the encoding of your file, or to control how to react if the file is not present, or not readable.