Calling an Ant Target via Java

I like to use Apache’s Ant for writing small ‘jobs’ like moving/copying files or something else. There are a simple way to call those targets via Java:

/**
 * LGPL
*/
public static void runTarget(File buildFile, String targetName, Map properties) {
      ProjectHelper projectHelper = ProjectHelper.getProjectHelper();
      Project project = new Project();

      project.setUserProperty("ant.file", buildFile.getAbsolutePath());
      if (properties != null)
         for (String key : properties.keySet()) {
            project.setProperty(key, properties.get(key));
         }
      project.init();

      project.addReference("ant.projectHelper", projectHelper);
      projectHelper.parse(project, buildFile);
      try {
         project.executeTarget(targetName);
      } catch (BuildException e) {
         throw new RuntimeException(String.format("Run %s [%s] failed: %s", buildFile, targetName, e.getMessage()), e);
      }
   }

The ‘properties’ are regular properties that can be used inside an ant target.