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xmltask provides the facility for automatically editing XML files as part of an Ant build. Unlike the standard filter task provided with Ant, it is XML-sensitive, but doesn't require you to define XSLTs.



xmltask allows you to specify sections of an XML file to append to, replace, remove or modify. The sections of the XML document to be modified are specified by XPath references, and the XML to insert can be specified in-line in the Ant build.xml, or loaded from files.

• The main section takes arguments to define an XML source and a destination file or directory. Note that the XML source is optional if you're creating a new document via instructions. dest and todir can be omitted if you're reading a document and storing subsections in buffers for use by another task (see below).



• s are used to define sets of files for xmltask to operate on. See the standard Ant documentation for information on using filesets.



• Nested elements allow replacements to take place, and are applied in the order that they're specified in. Each subsection may match zero or more nodes. Standard XPath paths are used here. If you're not familiar with these, the examples below will provide some hints. See here for more info.