How to edit XML parameter using Ant - eclipse

Question

I'm trying to write a timestamp as a context parameter into my context.xml at that time I execute my Ant script.
I was trying the following:
my context.xml
<Parameter name="deployingTimeStamp"
value="16.07.2012" <!-- shall be changed! -->
override="true" />
my build.xml
<tstamp>
<format property="time" pattern="dd.MM.yyyy"
unit="hour"/>
</tstamp>
<replace file="${conf.dir}/dev/context.xml" >
<replacefilter token="deployingTimeStamp" value="${time}" />
</replace>
Unfortunately it doesn't replace the value, it just replaces the name "deployingTimeStamp" itself and changes it to the current date.
How can I solve this problem?

Answer 1

The replacefilter token is going to replace the token you define. Why don't you add a placeholder value in the XML (i.e. [[buildTimeStamp]] ) and then use:
<replace file="${conf.dir}/dev/context.xml" >
<replacefilter token="[[buildTimeStamp]]" value="${time}" />
</replace>
So your original xml would be
<Parameter name="deployingTimeStamp"
value="[[buildTimeStamp]]" <!-- shall be changed! -->
override="true" />
Additional tips based on comment discussion:
What you might not be doing is copying your main source files into a build directory to perform your replaces first. This is pretty standard in build scripts which is why I mentioned you check your files out of source control first. If you are not using source control and have a folder on your computer then you need to copy the files from that folder to another folder first before performing your replace and other packaging of the app.
<copy todir="../dest/dir">
<fileset dir="src_dir" excludes="**/*.java"/>
</copy>
Something like above where you copy source to working directory. THEN you perform your actions on it, and afterwards remove it when you have a package (i.e. jar file or war file or something if java). You can view the delete functionality in Ant's documentation as well:
http://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/copy.html