How to expand non-entity reference in xml file with Ant

Question

I have an XML file with the following content:

<root-tag>
  <entry name="name1" value="/usr/bin" />
  <entry name="full_path" value="${name2}" />
  <entry name="name2" value="${name1}/dpkg" />
</root-tag>

I want to read this file in Ant and put the attribute value of value in the <entry> node whose name value is "full_path" into a property with Ant.

I can easily do this, e.g. using <xmltask> with its <copy> element:

<copy path="root-tag/entry[@name='full_path']/@value" property="outputProperty" />

However, what I get is ${name2}, which is meaningless to me. I need ${name2} to be resolved into the ${name1}/dpkg and then the ${name1} part is resolved into /usr/bin, as a result, /usr/bin/dpkg.

And I must look for "full_path" because the other two names can't be predicted.

Since this is not entity reference, <xmltask> can't automatically expand it.

How should I achieve my goal in Ant build file?

Answer 1

You can use anttask propertycopy for the same. Refer link - http://ant-contrib.sourceforge.net/tasks/tasks/propertycopy.html