B.4 ApplyTask

Applies a system command on each resource of the specified resource collection.

When the os attribute is specified, then the command is only executed when run on one of the specified operating systems.

The files of a number of Resource Collections – including but not restricted to FileSets, FileLists or DirSets – are passed as arguments to the system command.

Table B.5: Attributes

NameTypeDescriptionDefaultRequiredAlias
executable String The command to execute without any command line arguments.n/aYes 
dir String The directory the command is to be executed in.n/aNo 
output String Where to direct stdout.n/aNo 
error String Where to direct stderr.n/aNo 
os String Only execute if the Appendix A, Fact Sheet property contains specified text. n/aNo 
escape Boolean Escape shell metacharacters before execution. Setting this to true will enable the escape precaution. false No 
passthru Boolean Whether to use PHP's passthru() function instead of exec(). false No 
spawn Boolean Whether to spawn unix programs to the background, redirecting stdout (output will not be logged by Phing). false No 
returnProperty String Property name to set return value to from the execution.n/aNo 
outputProperty String Property name to set output value to from the execution.n/aNo 
checkreturn Boolean Whether to check the return code of the execution, throws a BuildException when returncode != 0. false Nofailonerror
append Boolean Whether output (and error) should be appended to or overwrite an existing file. If you set parallel to false, you will probably want to set this one to true. false No 
parallel Boolean Run the command only once, appending all files as arguments. If false, command will be executed once for every file. false No 
addsourcefile Boolean Whether source file name(s) should be added to the end of command-line automatically. If you need to place it somewhere different, use a nested <srcfile> element between your <arg> elements to mark the insertion point. true No 
relative Boolean Whether the filenames should be passed on the command line as relative pathnames (relative to the base directory of the corresponding fileset/list for source files). false No 
forwardslash Boolean Whether the file names should be passed with forward slashes even if the operating system requires other file separator. false No 
maxparallel Integer Limit the amount of parallelism by passing at most this many sourcefiles at once. Set it to <= 0 for unlimited. 0 No 
skipemptyfilesets Boolean Don't run the command, if no source files have been found or are newer than their corresponding target files. Despite its name, this attribute applies to filelists as well. false No 
type String One of file, dir or both. If set to file, only the names of plain files will be sent to the command. If set to dir, only the names of directories are considered. Note: The type attribute does not apply to nested dirsets - dirsets always implicitly assume type to be dir. file No 
force Boolean Whether to bypass timestamp comparisons for target files. false No 

B.4.1 Examples

<!-- Invokes somecommand arg1 SOURCEFILENAME arg2 for each file in /tmp -->
<apply executable="somecommand" parallel="false">
    <arg value="arg1"/>
    <srcfile/>
    <arg value="arg2"/>
    <fileset dir="/tmp"/>
</apply>

<!-- List all the .conf files of "/etc" to the "out.log" file. -->
<apply executable="ls" output="/tmp/out.log" append="true" >
    <arg value="-alh" />
    <fileset dir="/etc" >
        <include name="*.conf" />
    </fileset>
</apply>
        

B.4.2 Supported Nested Tags

  • arg

    Table B.6: Attributes

    NameTypeDescriptionDefaultRequired
    value String A single command-line argument; can contain space characters. n/aOne of these
    file String The name of a file as a single command-line argument; will be replaced with the absolute filename of the file. n/a
    path String A string that will be treated as a path-like string as a single command-line argument; you can use ; or : as path separators and Phing will convert it to the platform's local conventions. n/a
    line String A space-delimited list of command-line arguments. n/a


  • fileset

  • filelist

  • dirset

  • mapper

  • srcfile

  • targetfile