Writing to a Properties File with Apache ANT

I needed to create properties file every time I made a migration in order to know who, when and from where the migration was made.
The easiest way to do this is using Apache ANT.

To gain access to the environment variables you must declare the environment property. This can be done under the project tag.

<property environment="env" />

Inside your target use the following code:

When you run the make-properties target if will generate a file named build.properties with something like this:

<target name="make-properties " >
<propertyfile file="build.properties" comment="A comment to appear  in the properties file."> 
<entry key="program.BUILDDATE" type="date" value="now" pattern="yyyyMMdd-HHmmss" />
<entry key="program.BUILDHOST" value="${env.COMPUTERNAME}" />
<entry key="program.BUILDUSER" value="${user.name}" />
</propertyfile>
</target>

When you run the make-properties target if will generate a file named build.properties with something like this:

# A comment to appear  in the properties file.
#Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:45:24 -0500
program.BUILDDATE=20101201-114524
program.BUILDHOST=GISHOST
program.BUILDUSER=LBerrocal