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Hacking NetBeans #2 - Executing Ant Tasks from the IDE

In my new plug-in I need to call an an task from the IDE. Thanks to Zajo for telling me the secret how to do that via NetBeans API. It's quite simple, the hardest thing is (as usual) to find the right classes and methods. Here is the source code:

import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
import org.apache.tools.ant.module.api.support.ActionUtils;
import org.openide.filesystems.FileObject;
import org.openide.filesystems.FileUtil;
...

       String script = "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>" +
                "<project name=\"Packager\" default=\"copy\" basedir=\".\">" +
                "<target name=\"copy\">" +
                "<copy todir=\"e:\\test2\">" +
                "<fileset dir=\"e:\\test\" includes=\"**/*.txt\"/>" +
                "</copy>" +
                "</target>" +
                "</project>";
        try {
           File zf = File.createTempFile("ant-copy", "xml");
           BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(zf.getAbsoluteFile()));
           out.write(script);
           out.close();
           FileObject zfo = FileUtil.toFileObject(FileUtil.normalizeFile(zf));
           ActionUtils.runTarget(zfo, new String[] {"copy"}, null);
           zf.deleteOnExit();
        } catch (IOException e) {
           System.out.println("IO error: "+e);
        }

What do I do in the code? At first I create a xml file which will serve as the ant script. I create it as a temporary file in default temp dir and write the xml into it. To execute the ant task I call the ActionUtils.runTarget method with parameters - a fileobject (created from a normalized File), 1 target to run and no properties. At the end I mark the file to be deleted when VM exits. Easy, isn't it?

To be able to compile this code you need to add to your plug-in two dependencies - Ant and Execution API. When you run this code, the output window opens and shows the results:

Now I can do with my plug-in anything what ant is capable of. Time to generate some powerful ant scripts.

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