using dbunit to clean insert in a db from ant target - database

Question

I use dbunit to test db operations in my webapp.Recently ,I used dbunits ant task org.dbunit.ant.DbUnitTask to create an xml representation of items in my database.I got this
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<dataset>
<table name="AUTHOR">
<column>AUTHOR_ID</column>
<column>AUTHOR_NAME</column>
<column>AUTHOR_ADDRESS</column>
<row>
<value>0</value>
<value>j.k.rowling</value>
<value>london</value>
</row>
<row>
<value>1</value>
<value><![CDATA[stephen king]]></value>
<value><![CDATA[castle rock,maine]]></value>
</row>
</table>
...
I wanted to clean insert into the db ,values from this xml file.In a testcase's you do this by
public void init() throws FileNotFoundException, IOException, ClassNotFoundException, SQLException, DatabaseUnitException {
connection = DbUnitUtils.createConnection();
try {
DatabaseOperation.CLEAN_INSERT.execute(connection,DbUnitUtils.createDataSet("initialdata.xml"));
}finally {
connection.close();
}
}
I wanted to do the same using an ant target.So I wrote
<target name="insertdata" depends="startdb">
<dbunit driver="${db.driver}"
url="${db.url}"
userid="${db.username}"
password="${db.password}">
<operation type="CLEAN_INSERT" src="data/dbunit/initialdata.xml"/>
</dbunit>
</target>
<taskdef
name="dbunit"
classname="org.dbunit.ant.DbUnitTask"
classpathref="clientclasspath"
/>
where the driver.username,password etc are taken from a properties file
However,I get this error
insertdata:
[dbunit] Executing operation: CLEAN_INSERT
[dbunit] on file: C:\code\jee\myapp\data\dbunit\initialdata.xml
[dbunit] with format: null
[dbunit] 550 [main] ERROR org.dbunit.database.DatabaseDataSet - Table 'value' not found in tableMap=org.dbunit.dataset.OrderedTableNameMa
p[_tableNames=[AUTHOR], _tableMap={AUTHOR=null}, _caseSensitiveTableNames=false]
Can anyone make sense of this error?The same xml file when passed to the method DatabaseOperation.CLEAN_INSERT.execute(connection,DbUnitUtils.createDataSet("initialdata.xml"))
succeeds in cleanly inserting the data.
Any help welcome
thanks
mark

Answer 1

I'm not sure what the DbUnitUtils.createDataSet() method is up to, but it looks like you may need to specify the format for the XML as xml - i.e. conforming to the fixed DTD of an XMLDataSet. The Ant task assumes flat format if you don't specify one, and flat format doesn't look like your example XML.
<operation type="CLEAN_INSERT" src="data/dbunit/initialdata.xml" format="xml" />
See Parameters specified as nested elements for operation.