Building a Flex project with Ant

Here is a quick sample on how to build a simple Flex
"hello world" project with Ant.

The "hello world" project contains a src folder with one Flex application file and an Ant build.xml file:

./project_home/
  ./src/
      app.mxml
  build.xml

The app.mxml is the main module of the project. It simply has a label with a "Hello World!" text:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" layout="absolute">
<mx:Label text="Hello World!"/>
</mx:Application>

Here is the build.xml source:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<project name="fx_practice7" default="all">

 <!-- Init the build process -->
 <target name="init" unless="initialized">
     <!-- Name of project and version -->
  <property name="FLEX_HOME" location="/Users/mykola/java/flex"/>

     <property name="proj.name" value="${ant.project.name}" />
     <property name="proj.shortname" value="${ant.project.name}" />
     <property name="version.major" value="0" />
     <property name="version.minor" value="9" />
     <property name="version.revision" value="0" />
     <property name="APP_TITLE" value="Sample Application" />
     <property name="APP_WIDTH" value="800" />
     <property name="APP_HEIGHT" value="600" />
  
     <!-- Global properties for this build -->
     <property name="build.dir" location="${basedir}/build" />
     <property name="flex_src" location="${basedir}/src" />

     <path id="project.classpath">
         <pathelement path="${java.class.path}" />
     </path>
  
     <taskdef resource="flexTasks.tasks"
              classpath="${FLEX_HOME}/ant/lib/flexTasks.jar" />
  
     <echoproperties/>

     <property name="initialized" value="true" />
  
     <mkdir dir="${build.dir}" />
 </target>

 <!-- Default target: clean and build the application -->
 <target name="all" depends="init">
     <antcall target="clean" />
     <antcall target="build" />
 </target>

 <!-- Compile Flex files -->
 <target name="compile.flex" depends="init">
     <property name="module"
               value="${ant.project.name}"
               description="The name of the application module." />

     <mxmlc file="${flex_src}/${module}.mxml"
            keep-generated-actionscript="true"
            output="${build.dir}/${ant.project.name}/${module}.swf"
            actionscript-file-encoding="UTF-8"
            incremental="true"
            context-root="${ant.project.name}"
            debug="true">
         <load-config filename="${FLEX_HOME}/frameworks/flex-config.xml" />
         <source-path path-element="${FLEX_HOME}/frameworks" />
         <compiler.source-path path-element="${flex_src}" />
     </mxmlc>

     <html-wrapper title="${APP_TITLE}"
                   file="index.html"
                   application="app"
                   swf="${module}"
                   width="${APP_WIDTH}"
                   height="${APP_HEIGHT}"
                   version-major="${version.major}"
                   version-minor="${version.minor}"
                   version-revision="${version.revision}"
                   history="true"
                   template="express-installation"
                   output="${build.dir}/${ant.project.name}/" />

 </target>

 <!-- Build the application -->
 <target name="build" depends="init">
     <antcall target="compile.flex" />
 </target>

 <!-- Clean build files -->
 <target name="clean" depends="init">
     <delete dir="${basedir}/generated" />
     <delete dir="${build.dir}" />
 </target>

 <target name="usage" description="Usage documentation">
     <echo>
             all - clean and build the project
     </echo>
 </target>
</project>

NOTE: Please update FLEX_HOME and other properties in the build.xml as required for your environment.

To do the build, simply run ant in the project folder. The build output will be stored in the project/build/ folder. To see the result, open index.html in a browser. The index.html is located in the project/build/project_home/ folder.