How can I change property values in a file using Ant?

Question

Example input:

SERVER_NAME=server1
PROFILE_NAME=profile1
...

Example output:

SERVER_NAME=server3
PROFILE_NAME=profile3
...

This file will use in applicationContext.xml. I've tried

<copy file="${web.dir}/jexamples.css_tpl"
         tofile="${web.dir}/jexamples.css" >
    <filterchain>
       <replacetokens>
            <token key="SERVER_NAME" value="server2"/>
            <token key="PROFILE_NAME" value="profi"/>

        </replacetokens>
    </filterchain>
</copy>

but it doesn't work.

Solution 1

Your filterchain is ok, but your source file should look like this:

SERVER_NAME=@SERVER_NAME@
PROFILE_NAME=@PROFILE_NAME@

This code (as provided by you)

<copy file="${web.dir}/jexamples.css_tpl"
         tofile="${web.dir}/jexamples.css" >
    <filterchain>
       <replacetokens>
            <token key="SERVER_NAME" value="server2"/>
            <token key="PROFILE_NAME" value="profi"/>
        </replacetokens>
    </filterchain>
</copy>

replaces the tokens and gives you

SERVER_NAME=server2
PROFILE_NAME=profi

---

If you want to keep your original file as you have it now, one way would be to use replaceregex:

<filterchain>
  <tokenfilter>
    <replaceregex pattern="^[ \t]*SERVER_NAME[ \t]*=.*$"
                  replace="SERVER_NAME=server2"/>
    <replaceregex pattern="^[ \t]*PROFILE_NAME[ \t]*=.*$"
                  replace="PROFILE_NAME=profi"/>
  </tokenfilter>
</filterchain>

This would replace every line starting with SERVER_NAME= by SERVER_NAME=server2 (same for PROFILE_NAME=). This will return get you the output you described.

[ \t]* is to ignore whitespace.

Solution 2

Cleaner solution is using "propertyfile" ant task - see http://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/propertyfile.html

<copy file="${web.dir}/jexamples.css_tpl"
     tofile="${web.dir}/jexamples.css" />
<propertyfile file="${web.dir}/jexamples.css">
    <entry key="SERVER_NAME" value="server2"/>
</propertyfile>

Comments

[Andrew]

is it possible to change property value without tokens@@ ?

[Mr Lou]

How can i pass a or more arguments to ant,I do not want to use source files to set the var and value such you show SERVER_NAME=server2 I hope pass the args when i run the ant build file in eclipse.

[Peter Lang]

@janwen: This is a different question, so we should not mess up this one. Please ask a new question (a link to this question might be useful).

[Sumit Ramteke]

This solution works perfectly for me. I wanted to make this happen for .properties file

[plinyar]

Great solution.Thanks

[srinivas chaitanya]

WARNING:If the key is containing some special characters, It is appended with \ which is an issue