getfilename NAnt task
As part of my current quest to fully automate our build, I found my self needing the ability to copy a database backup from our remote server. The backup is in a folder along with several other backups, with a filename based on the date. I didn’t fancy trying to programmatically guess the filename, so I wrote an NAnt task to grab the newest file in a directory. Thanks to Richard Case for his overview of how to create a custom NAnt task.
The getfilename task simply gets the filename of a file in a directory, then pushes the name into the specified property. The filename to find can be based on the creation date, last modified date etc…
The attributes are as follows:
| Attribute | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| in | The directory to search | Yes |
| property | The property to push the filename into. | Yes |
| searchPattern | Wildcard search pattern for finding the file. | No |
| of |
The file to get the filename of. NewestFile - The most recently created file OldestFile - The oldest file in the directory FirstModifiedFile - The file with the oldest last modified date LastModifiedFile - The most recently modified file FirstFile - The first file in the directory, using default sorting LastFile - The last file in the directory, using default sorting |
No - Defaults to NewestFile |
An example usage is:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="Example" default="run">
<target name="run">
<getfilename of="NewestFile" in="C:\path\to\backups" searchPattern="*.bak" property="filename" />
<echo message="Filename: ${filename}" />
</target>
</project>
Foreseeable usage situations revolve around anything where you’d need to get the last modified, or newest file in a directory; backups, database scripts etc…
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