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Ant: Moving files and directories

*** Posted At *** : June 24, 2007 6:38 PM | *** Posted By *** : Andy Jarrett
*** Related Categories ***: Rough Guide,Eclipse,Ant,CFEclipse

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:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <project name="myFirstBuildFile" default="" basedir=".">
        <description>
            A description of what this build file does
        </description>
        <!-- Simply echo's a message to the screen -->
        <echo message="Hello foo, I am the build.xml" />
    </project>

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

  • build.xml
    • [folder_live]
    • [folder_test]
      • index.cfm
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.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <project name="myFirstBuildFile" default="" basedir=".">
        <description>
            A description of what this build file does
        </description>    
        <!-- Relative lo    cation of test folder -->
        <property name="test" value="folder_test/" />
        <!-- Relative location of live folder -->
        <property name="live" value="folder_live/" />
    
        <!-- move file -->
        <move file="${test}index.cfm" todir="${live}" />    
        <echo message="The index.cfm file has been moved" />
    </project>
Now while still in the editor right-click anywhere on your build.xml file and choose the following:

    Run As >> Ant Build
If 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:
  • build.xml
    • [folder_live]
    • [folder_test]
      • [css]
      • [images]
      • index.cfm

The plan now is move the complete directory of 'folder_test' to 'folder_live':


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project name="myFirstBuildFile" default="" basedir=".">
    <description>
        A description of what this build file does
    </description>    
    <!-- Relative lo    cation of test folder -->
    <property name="test" value="folder_test/" />
    <!-- Relative location of live folder -->
    <property name="live" value="folder_live/" />

    <!--
        move directories and files

        From Ant 1.6.3 you can write the following as:
        <move file="${test}" tofile="${live}" />
    -->
    <move todir="${live}">
        <fileset dir="${test}"/>
    </move>            

    <echo message="The contest of folder_test have been moved" />

    <!--
        You'll notice that when moving the directories Ant deletes the
        original folder. Because of this we are going to use <mkdir>
        to re-create the original folder
    -->    

<mkdir dir="${test}" />
    <echo message="We have recreated the the folder_test directory" />

</project>    
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 all .cfm files and leave the scribble file in test -->
<move todir="${live}">
<fileset dir="${test}">
<include name="*.cfm"/>
<exclude name="scribble.cfm"/>
</fileset>
</move>

Move a list of files to a new directory


<move todir="${live}">
<filelist dir="${test}">
<file name="index.cfm"/>
<file name="fridays_joke.cfm"/>
</filelist>
</move>

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


<!--- Notice the new parameter here, includeemptydirs -->
<move todir="${live}" includeemptydirs="false">
<fileset dir="${test}">
<exclude name="**/*.bak"/>
</fileset>
<mapper type="glob" from="*" to="*.bak"/>
</move>

More resources:

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jM's Gravatar Another great article! I've now written my first Ant task. With solid articles like this I might eventually "get" this eclipse/cfeclipse/ant stuff ;-)

Thanks!
# *** Posted By *** jM | 9/28/07 5:55 PM
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