{"id":37,"date":"2013-05-09T01:28:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-08T15:28:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2018-05-22T21:19:30","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T11:19:30","slug":"ant-edit-property-values","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2013\/05\/ant-edit-property-values\/","title":{"rendered":"Ant: edit property values"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the frustrations of using ant<\/i>\u00a0was the difficulty of deriving one property value performing some sort of editing operation on an existing property value. The mapper<\/i> task does a lot of grunt work for file names, but not for property values as such.<\/p>\n

A common requirement is to map a Java package name to a corresponding directory structure. I have a property containing the package name, and I want to create another property with the directories. Here’s one way to do that.<\/p>\n

<property name=\"my.package\" value=\"my.java.package\"\/>\n<!-- ... Some time later ... -->\n<loadresource property=\"my.package.dirs\">\n<string value=\"${my.package}\"\/>\n<filterchain>\n<replacestring from=\".\" to=\"${file.separator}\"\/>\n<striplinebreaks\/>\n      <\/filterchain>\n<\/loadresource><\/pre>\n
For more complex transformations, a replaceregexp filter can be used. The above example would then be:<\/p>\n
<property name=\"my.package\" value=\"my.java.package\"\/>\n<!-- ... Some time later ... -->\n<loadresource property=\"my.package.dirs\">\n<string value=\"${my.package}\"\/>\n<filterchain>\n<striplinebreaks\/>\n<replaceregex pattern=\".\" replace=\"${file.separator}\" flags=\"g\"\/>\n<\/filterchain>\n<\/loadresource><\/pre>\n
\n
Here’s a macrodef to perform string editing, included in an ant build file called editstring.xml with a test invocation. The base file, without the test, can be downloaded here<\/a>.<\/p>\n
<project name=\"editstring\">\n  <macrodef name=\"editstring\"\n    description=\"Edit a string using a regexp pattern and repacement, with optional flags, placing result in a property.\">\n    <attribute name=\"string\"\n      description=\"String being edited.\"\/>\n    <attribute name=\"dest\"\n      description=\"Name of the property receiving the edit result.\"\/>\n    <attribute name=\"pattern\"\n      description=\"Regexp pattern to be replaced.\"\/>\n    <attribute name=\"replace\"\n      description=\"Regexp replacement pattern.\"\/>\n    <attribute name=\"flags\"\n      description=\"Regexp replacement flags.\"\n      default=\"-g\"\/>\n    <sequential>\n      <loadresource property=\"@{dest}\">\n        <string value=\"@{string}\"\/>\n          <filterchain>\n            <replaceregex pattern=\"@{pattern}\"\n             replace=\"@{replace}\" flags=\"@{flags}\"\/>\n            <striplinebreaks\/>\n          <\/filterchain>\n      <\/loadresource>\n    <\/sequential>\n  <\/macrodef>\n\n  <target name=\"junk\">\n    <property name=\"teststr\" value=\"My test string.\"\/>\n    <editstring string=\"${teststr}\" dest=\"result\"\n      pattern=\"^(S+s+)S+(s+.*)$\" replace=\"1result2\"\/>\n    <echo>${teststr} : ${result}<\/echo>\n  <\/target>\n<\/project><\/pre>\n
Be aware of the striplinebreaks<\/i> filter. I found when I used this method that I was getting a spurious newline on the end of my edited string, so I inserted striplinebreaks<\/i>. However, if you are editing a multiline string, this will break your replacement. You will have to experiment in those circumstances. I suspect that this is an artifact of the line-at-a-time processing of replacement text. I think it appends a line break after replacement.<\/p>\n
I first read about this solution in a post by Mark Melvin<\/a>. Thanks to Mark.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the frustrations of using ant\u00a0was the difficulty of deriving one property value performing some sort of editing operation on an existing property value. The mapper task does a lot of grunt work for file names, but not for property values as such. A common requirement is to map a Java package name to … Continue reading “Ant: edit property values”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-code"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8SCfl-B","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":36,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2013\/05\/ant-process-elements-in-a-list\/","url_meta":{"origin":37,"position":0},"title":"Ant: process elements in a list","author":"pbw","date":"Sun 19th May '13","format":false,"excerpt":"I was looking for a way to process a list of items in an ant build file, similar to what you would do in Java with a construct like: for ( Element element : elements ) { \/\/ do stuff with element } The approach of XSLT, using recursive calls\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Code"","block_context":{"text":"Code","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/code\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1109,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2023\/05\/what-happens-in-wieambilla-stays-in-wieambilla\/","url_meta":{"origin":37,"position":1},"title":"What Happens In Wieambilla, Stays In Wieambilla","author":"Me","date":"Wed 17th May '23","format":false,"excerpt":"First published at NewCatallaxy blog, 4 January, 2023 Six people died at Wieambilla. 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