AndyJarrett

Ant- Moving files and directories

First off I wanna say that I'm running all my Ant task via Eclipse and not the command line. If there is a demand to know how to install Ant and run it from the command line I'll do that post separately.

So, what is Ant? Well to steal a quote from Mark Drew, think of Ant as .bat files on steroids. You use XML to describe a set of commands to run a whole range of tasks to do anything from SVN/CVS checkouts, unit tests, FTP, emails, sql, moving/copying folders/files generally just name it!

In this guide I want to cover creating a build.xml file and moving files/folders. I'm assuming you've got Eclipse and you know you way around it enough. Before we do begin you will need to ensure that you can see the Console View.

Window >> Show View >> Other >> General >> Console

Lets begin!

Create a new project in your Eclipse workspace. The type of project doesn't matter, though I'm creating a CFEclipse one as I want to move .cfm pages around. From within the project create a new file called Build.xml right-click on the project folder >> new >> file >> file name (build.xml) In your build.xml add the following and save: A description of what this build file does

Now while still in the editor right-click anywhere on your build.xml file and choose the following: Run As >> Ant Build In the console window you should see something like

Buildfile: /[your eclipse work space root]/Ant/build.xml
[echo] Hello foo, I am the build.xml
BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 136 milliseconds

You've ran your first build.xml file excellent. Now lets move a file. Create two more folders in your Ant project called 'folder_test' and 'folder_live' and in the first folder put a file called 'index.cfm'. Your project should now look like this

The idea of the next task to copy index.cfm from the test folder to the live one, i'm also going to introduce properties, think of them as variables. A description of what this build file does Now while still in the editor right-click anywhere on your build.xml file and choose the following: Run As >> Ant BuildIf all has gone well you should of just moved your index.cfm file from test to live. Thats all good and well but I doubt you ever have to move just one file my guess is that you have a host of folders and files. In the directory 'folder_test' add two other directories called 'images' and 'css' and move 'index.cfm' back as well. You new directory structure should look like this:

The plan now is move the complete directory of 'folder_test' to 'folder_live': A description of what this build file does Again while in the editor right-click anywhere on your build.xml file and choose the following: Run As >> Ant Build

Of course there is more you can do, rather than going through full set examples here or some of the other features:

Move a set of files to a new directory

Move a list of files to a new directory

Append ".bak" to the names of all files in a directory.

More resources: