Get

Description

Gets files from URLs. When the verbose option is "on", this task displays a '.' for every 100 Kb retrieved. Any URL schema supported by the runtime is valid here, including http:, ftp: and jar:;

A username and password can be specified, in which case basic 'slightly encoded plain text' authentication is used. This is only secure over an HTTPS link.

Proxies. Since Apache Ant 1.7.0, Ant running on Java1.5 or later can use the proxy settings of the operating system if enabled with the -autoproxy option. There is also the <setproxy> task for earlier Java versions. With proxies turned on, <get> requests against localhost may not work as expected, if the request is relayed to the proxy.

Parameters

Parameters specified as nested elements

any resource collection

Resource Collections are used to select groups of URLs to download. If the collection contains more than one resource, the dest attribute must point to a directory if it exists or a directory will be created if it doesn't exist. The destination file name use the last part of the path of the source URL unless you also specify a mapper.

mapper

You can define name transformations by using a nested mapper element. You can also use any filenamemapper type in place of the mapper element.

The mapper will receive the resource's name as argument. Any resource for which the mapper returns no or more than one mapped name will be skipped. If the returned name is a relative path, it will be considered relative to the dest attribute.

Examples

  <get src="http://ant.apache.org/" dest="help/index.html"/>

Gets the index page of http://ant.apache.org/, and stores it in the file help/index.html.

  <get src="http://www.apache.org/dist/ant/KEYS" 
    dest="KEYS" 
    verbose="true"
    usetimestamp="true"/>

Gets the PGP keys of Ant's (current and past) release managers, if the local copy is missing or out of date. Uses the verbose option for progress information.

  <get src="https://insecure-bank.org/statement/user=1214" 
    dest="statement.html" 
    username="1214";
    password="secret"/>

Fetches some file from a server with access control. Because https is being used the fact that basic auth sends passwords in plaintext is moot if you ignore the fact that it is part of your build file which may be readable by third parties. If you need more security, consider using the input task to query for a password.

Using a macro like the following

  <macrodef name="get-and-checksum">
    <attribute name="url"/>
    <attribute name="dest"/>
    <sequential>
      <local name="destdir"/>
      <dirname property="destdir" file="@{dest}"/>
      <get dest="${destdir}">
        <url url="@{url}"/>
        <url url="@{url}.sha1"/>
        <firstmatchmapper>
          <globmapper from="@{url}.sha1" to="@{dest}.sha"/>
          <globmapper from="@{url}" to="@{dest}"/>
        </firstmatchmapper>
      </get>
      <local name="checksum.matches"/>
      <local name="checksum.matches.fail"/>
      <checksum file="@{dest}" algorithm="sha" fileext=".sha"
                verifyproperty="checksum.matches"/>
      <condition property="checksum.matches.fail">
        <equals arg1="${checksum.matches}" arg2="false"/>
      </condition>
      <fail if="checksum.matches.fail">Checksum error</fail>
    </sequential>
  </macrodef>

it is possible to download an artifacts together with its SHA1 checksum (assuming a certain naming convention for the checksum file, of course) and validate the checksum on the fly.

<get dest="downloads">
  <url url="http://ant.apache.org/index.html"/> 
  <url url="http://ant.apache.org/faq.html"/>
</get>

Gets the index and FAQ pages of http://ant.apache.org/, and stores them in the directory downloads which will be created if necessary.