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Running ant-target to send a mail via java

I´m a pretty new to ant and I´m trying to send an email within an ant-target which is called by Java. I´m using the Netbeans IDE.
Ant:
<project name="AntTargets" default="main" basedir=".">
<description>Builds, tests, and runs the project AntTargets.</description>
<import file="nbproject/build-impl.xml"/>
<target name="run" depends="jar">
<java classpathref="AntTargets.classpath" fork="true" classname="Client" />
</target>
<target name="main">
<echo message="******************[MAIN]******************"/>
<property file="nbproject/build.properties"/>
<property name="to" value="${builder}" />
<property name="from" value="${builder}" />
<property name="server" value="${server}" />
<property name="port" value="${port}" />
<mail mailhost="${server}" mailport="${port}" subject="Test build">
<from address="${from}"/>
<replyto address="${to}"/>
<to address="test#domain.de"/>
<message>The build has been completed</message>
</mail>
<echo message="Email to ${to} from ${from} has been sent using the server ${server} on port ${port}."/>
</target>
</project>
Java:
import java.io.File;
import org.apache.tools.ant.Project;
import org.apache.tools.ant.ProjectHelper;
public class AntTargets {
public static void main(String[] args) {
//get new file
File buildFile = new File("build.xml");
//create new project
Project p = new Project();
p.setUserProperty("ant.file", buildFile.getAbsolutePath());
p.init();
//initialize helper
ProjectHelper helper = ProjectHelper.getProjectHelper();
p.addReference("ant.projectHelper", helper);
//parse and execute
helper.parse(p, buildFile);
p.executeTarget(p.getDefaultTarget());
}
}
When I execute the ant part directly, the properties file is found, read and works overall but the mail-part gives me this error:
Failed to send email: javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage
build.xml:16:
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage
When I call it with java I get:
Reference AntTargets.classpath not found.
BUILD FAILED (total time: 0 seconds)
I would greatly appreciate any help and tip overall.

The issue is Ant doesn't know what AntTargets.classpath is.
You must define a classpath variable and give it id="AntTargets.classpath. In this path variable you should define the physical locations of the libraries you use. (You should look to creating path variables to reduce redundancies in code, particularly when you want to use the same path in different ant targets.)
Here's an example: Let's say that your project requires the Gson library at runtime.
First, create a path for that library. Let's assume you have your libraries in a lib directory.
<path id="library.gson-2.8.0.classpath">
<pathelement location="${basedir}/lib/gson-2.8.0.jar"/>
</path>
Do the same for other dependencies as well.
Next, create a path that will contain all these dependencies, so you can refer to all the dependencies as one variable. This will be your AntTargets.classpath
<path id="AntTargets.classpath">
<path refid="library.gson-2.8.0.classpath"/>
...... <!-- Add paths for your other dependencies by refid here-->
</path>
Now, when you use AntTargets.classpath Ant will know what that is and use it to run your jar.
I notice that you use this in the run target, so if you're trying to run the Client class from your own jar, include that in your classpath as well.
Also keep in mind that "Client" may not be enough information--you must provide the fully qualifying name of the class, including package names, e.g. something like "com.package.Client".
EDIT:
I just noticed the exception you're getting from running directly with Ant. You need to include the javax.mail library in this path variable we create. That should resolve that issue.
EDIT 2:
I seem to have misunderstood. I thought that your ant task was trying to call your Java program which would send the mail, but it couldn't since it didn't know where the javax.mail.jar is, and so I instructed you to add it to the classpath.
But what you want to do is:
Use the Ant mail task to send a mail.
And in the Java you want to read the build file and execute the target that sends the mail.
Here's some information on that: mail is an Ant Task that requires the javax.mail library, if you want to use certain arguments. Looking at a few questions like this and this, I see that you should put ${ANT_HOME}/lib, i.e. where your ant.jar is, so that Ant's classloader can pick it up and use it. In that case, if my assumption about what you want is correct, then you should be able to get rid of AntTargets.classpath, because really, your build file doesn't need to know how you call any of it's targets.

Ant fails in try catch block

In my ANT build I have the following code:
<trycatch reference="exception_ref">
<try>
<echo>Start Building Delivery</echo>
</try>
<catch>
<property name="exception" refid="exception_ref" />
<property name="message" value="Error in trycatch block:${line.separator}${exception}" />
<echo message="${message}" />
<fail message="${message}" />
</catch>
<finally>
<echo>Finally</echo>
</finally>
</trycatch>
Ant says:
Problem: failed to create task or type trycatch
Cause: The name is undefined.
Action: Check the spelling.
Action: Check that any custom tasks/types have been declared.
Action: Check that any / declarations have taken place.
What am I missing here?
// EDIT: I am using ANT in Eclipse

trycatch is a task provided by the Ant-Contrib third-party library. Make sure to download their Jar and have it referenced on the Ant classpath. See this link for how to do this.
On Eclipse, go to Window -> Preferences -> Ant -> Runtime. Under the Classpath tab, add the Ant-Contrib jar using the "Add External JARs..." button. And as mentioned in the link, you need to declare the tasks as follows:
<taskdef resource="net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml"/>

Migrate an ant script to Maven3

I'm migrating a maven 1 project to maven 3. The job is almost done actually with a missing task, What I need is to get all dependency names from pom file and write them to a configuration file as one string, the job is done like below in the maven.xml, check the last 5 lines where it writes the names to a file called wrapper.conf.
How can I achive this with Maven3? Is there a maven plugin I can use for this or I need to use ant script within my pom.xml?
<goal name="service">
<mkdir dir="${maven.build.dir}/grid" />
<ant:copy todir="${maven.build.dir}/grid">
<fileset dir="resources/javaservicewrapper" />
</ant:copy>
<j:forEach var="lib" items="${pom.artifacts}">
<j:set var="dep" value="${lib.dependency}"/>
<j:if test="${dep.getProperty('service.bundle')=='true'}">
<ant:copy failonerror="true" todir="${maven.build.dir}/grid/lib">
<fileset dir="${maven.repo.local}/${dep.groupId}/jars">
<include name="${dep.artifactId}-${dep.version}.${dep.type}"/>
<j:set var="SERVCP" value="../lib/${dep.artifactId}-${dep.version}.${dep.type}:${SERVCP}" />
</fileset>
</ant:copy>
</j:if>
</j:forEach>
<attainGoal name="jar" />
<ant:copy file="target/${maven.final.name}.jar" tofile="${maven.build.dir}/grid/lib/grid.jar" />
<j:set var="SERVCP" value="${SERVCP}../lib/gridcache.jar" />
<ant:copy todir="${maven.build.dir}/gridcache/conf" file="resources/javaservicewrapper/conf/wrapper.conf" overwrite="true">
<filterset begintoken="#" endtoken="#">
<filter token="service.classpath" value="${SERVCP}"/>
</filterset>
</ant:copy>
</goal>
EDIT : The solution using build-classpath worked well but I had other problems specific to using Javaservicewrapper. So best solution I found was creating whole the script/config file by appassembler-maven-plugin and let maven-assembly plugin to copy it to the conf folder

If you have the need to create a JSW (wrapper.conf) the simplest solution would be to use the appassembler-maven-plugin which can create such files.

Have a look at the build-classpath goal of the Maven Depency Plugin. You can fast check the result on the command line:
mvn dependency:build-classpath
You can change the path to the dependeny files using the 'prefix' (mdep.prefix) property
mvn -Dmdep.prefix=myLibFolder dependency:build-classpath
You will find much more configuration parameters in the documentation, e.g. the outputFile parameter ;-)

Filtering sources before compilation in NetBeans & Ant

I need to filter java files before compilation, leaving the original sources unchanged and compiling from filtered ones (basically, I need to set build date and such).
I'm using NetBeans with its great Ant build-files.
So, one day I discovered the need to pre-process my source files before compilation, and ran into a big problem. No, I did not run to SO at once, I did some research, but failed. So, here comes my sad story...
I found the "filter" option of "copy" task, overrided macrodef "j2seproject3:javac" in build-impl.xml file and added filter in the middle of it. I got the desired result, yes, but now my tests are not working, since they use that macrodef too.
Next, I tired to overriding "-do-compile" target, copying&filtering files to directory build/temp-src, and passing an argument of new source directory to "j2seproject3:javac":
<target depends="init,deps-jar,-pre-pre-compile,-pre-compile, -copy-persistence-xml,
-compile-depend,-prepare-sources"
if="have.sources" name="-do-compile">
<j2seproject3:javac gensrcdir="${build.generated.sources.dir}" srcdir="build/temp-src"/>
<copy todir="${build.classes.dir}">
<fileset dir="${src.dir}" excludes="${build.classes.excludes},${excludes}" includes="${includes}"/>
</copy>
</target>
And now Ant says to me, that macrodef in question does not exist!
The prefix "j2seproject3" for element "j2seproject3:javac" is not bound.
That's strange, since build-impl.xml contains that macrodef, and build-impl.xml is imported into main build file.
And, by the way, I cannot edit build-impl.xml directly, since NetBeans rewrites it on every other build.
So, my question is: how can I automatically filter sources before compiling in NetBeans, and do not break the build process?

Looking at the default build.xml, it contains a comment that reads (in part):
There exist several targets which are by default empty and which can be
used for execution of your tasks. These targets are usually executed
before and after some main targets. They are:
-pre-init: called before initialization of project properties
-post-init: called after initialization of project properties
-pre-compile: called before javac compilation
-post-compile: called after javac compilation
-pre-compile-single: called before javac compilation of single file
-post-compile-single: called after javac compilation of single file
-pre-compile-test: called before javac compilation of JUnit tests
-post-compile-test: called after javac compilation of JUnit tests
-pre-compile-test-single: called before javac compilation of single JUnit test
-post-compile-test-single: called after javac compilation of single JUunit test
-pre-jar: called before JAR building
-post-jar: called after JAR building
-post-clean: called after cleaning build products
So, to inject some pre-compile processing, you would provide a definition for -pre-compile.
FWIW, the error you got is because the j2seprojectX prefix is defined on the project tag of build-impl.xml, and the code in build.xml is outside of that tag.

Since I found an answer, and because it seems that nobody knows the answer, I'll post my solution.
build.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- Needed to add xmlns:j2seproject3 attribute, to be able to reference build-impl.xml macrodefs -->
<project name="Parrot" default="default" basedir="." xmlns:j2seproject3="http://www.netbeans.org/ns/j2se-project/3">
<import file="nbproject/build-impl.xml"/>
<target depends="init,deps-jar,-pre-pre-compile,-pre-compile, -copy-persistence-xml, -compile-depend,-prepare-sources" if="have.sources" name="-do-compile">
<j2seproject3:javac gensrcdir="${build.generated.sources.dir}" srcdir="build/temp-src"/>
<copy todir="${build.classes.dir}">
<fileset dir="${src.dir}" excludes="${build.classes.excludes},${excludes}" includes="${includes}"/>
</copy>
</target>
<!-- target to alter sources before compilation, you can add any preprocessing actions here -->
<target name="-filter-sources" description="Filters sources to temp-src, setting the build date">
<delete dir="build/temp-src" />
<mkdir dir="build/temp-src" />
<tstamp>
<format property="build.time" pattern="yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"/>
</tstamp>
<filter token="build-time" value="${build.time}" />
<copy todir="build/temp-src" filtering="true">
<fileset dir="src">
<filename name="**/*.java" />
</fileset>
</copy>
</target>
</project>

Is there a way to generalize an Apache ANT target?

We have an Apache ANT script to build our application, then check in the resulting JAR file into version control (VSS in this case). However, now we have a change that requires us to build 2 JAR files for this project, then check both into VSS.
The current target that checks the original JAR file into VSS discovers the name of the JAR file through some property. Is there an easy way to "generalize" this target so that I can reuse it to check in a JAR file with any name? In a normal language this would obviously call for a function parameter but, to my knowledge, there really isn't an equivalent concept in ANT.

I would suggest to work with macros over subant/antcall because the main advantage I found with macros is that you're in complete control over the properties that are passed to the macro (especially if you want to add new properties).
You simply refactor your Ant script starting with your target:
<target name="vss.check">
<vssadd localpath="D:\build\build.00012.zip"
comment="Added by automatic build"/>
</target>
creating a macro (notice the copy/paste and replacement with the #{file}):
<macrodef name="private-vssadd">
<attribute name="file"/>
<sequential>
<vssadd localpath="#{file}"
comment="Added by automatic build"/>
</sequential>
</macrodef>
and invoke the macros with your files:
<target name="vss.check">
<private-vssadd file="D:\build\File1.zip"/>
<private-vssadd file="D:\build\File2.zip"/>
</target>
Refactoring, "the Ant way"

It is generally considered a bad idea to version control your binaries and I do not recommend doing so. But if you absolutely have to, you can use antcall combined with param to pass parameters and call a target.
<antcall target="reusable">
<param name="some.variable" value="var1"/>
</antcall>
<target name="reusable">
<!-- Do something with ${some.variable} -->
</target>
You can find more information about the antcall task here.

Take a look at Ant macros. They allow you to define reusable "routines" for Ant builds. You can find an example here (item 15).

Also check out the subant task, which lets you call the same target on multiple build files:
<project name="subant" default="subant1">
<property name="build.dir" value="subant.build"/>
<target name="subant1">
<subant target="">
<property name="build.dir" value="subant1.build"/>
<property name="not.overloaded" value="not.overloaded"/>
<fileset dir="." includes="*/build.xml"/>
</subant>
</target>
</project>

You can use Gant to script your build with groovy to do what you want or have a look at the groovy ant task.