How to pass parameters to a Junit test case from the Ant build tool

Question

I'm using JUnit under Ant to execute my Selenium test cases. My test cases need to read the files which contain some test data. I don't mind having the files names embedded in the test cases, but I'd like to have the name of the directory where the data files are stored in the build.xml file.

What's the best way to pass information like that from a build.xml file down into the test cases? Is it a good idea to use the ant property here? Is it possible to inject the Junit4 parameter from the build.xml file?

Answer 1

The JUnit task accepts nested system property elements.

<junit fork="no">
  <sysproperty key="mydatadir" value="${some piece of }"/>
  ...
</junit>

You can access these from within the tests using System.getProperty().