Invoke ANT targets programmatically using java

You can invoke ant targets programmatically with java using below code. You need to be sure that the jar files inside ANT_HOME\lib are included in project.

import java.io.File;

import org.apache.tools.ant.Project;
import org.apache.tools.ant.ProjectHelper;

public class Test {   
    public static void runAnt(){
        File buildFile = new File("build.xml");
        if(!buildFile.exists()){
            System.out.println("ERROR :: File "+buildFile.getAbsolutePath()+" does not exist");
        }            
        Project p = new Project();
        p.setUserProperty("ant.file", buildFile.getAbsolutePath());
        p.init();
        ProjectHelper helper = ProjectHelper.getProjectHelper();
        p.addReference("ant.projectHelper", helper);
        helper.parse(p, buildFile);
        p.executeTarget(p.getDefaultTarget());
    }    
    public static void main(String... args){
        runAnt();
    }
}