SnowRun

SnowRun aims to help developers and administrators to interact with their ServiceNow instance through the command line. Initially started to provide a command-line interface for executing server-side scripts remotely from the command line or a local file, it now additionally offers a few useful commands to interact with ServiceNow without having to click around in web browser, including database search and run-time object inspection.

SnowRun is extensible. You can write your own extensions using ServiceNow JavaScript API that you are already familiar with.

It is free, experimental, assumed to work with the London release, although it may work with other releases as well, and is in no way affiliated with ServiceNow Inc.

Version 0.0.1

Requirements:

• curl, bash, grep, sed, etc. (=> Linux / Windows Subsystem for Linux / Cygwin / MSYS / …)
• a running ServiceNow instance
• an account in ServiceNow that is capable of running background scripts

Warnings

• Never ever try running anything of this against your production instance.
• Never ever allow anyone to steal your cookies (see below).
• Exit the shell after you finish your work. Your credentials are stored in environment variables when you work. (That's bad, I know.)
• The tool has been written to accommodate the author's current needs; it may not correctly detect some error states, and in general, mostly expects "happy-case" scenarios.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Instructions

This guide assumes you have an administrator account in your ServiceNow instance. If not, some commands may not work for you.
Scripts have been "tested" (=are known (more or less) to work) with Ubuntu 18.04 using Windows Subsystem for Linux as well as with MSYS shipped with Git for Windows.

Setting up Environment

1. Set your instance (optional, you can skip to step 2)

Preferably, avoid using the tool with production instances.

export snow_instance=dev1234.service-now.com

2. Get scripts on your PATH, enable autocompletion and enter credentials

source snow-run-env.sh

3. Log in:

Some commands require you to log in first, depending on whether they are executed through the REST interface or background script.

snow login

The will create a user session and store cookies to a directory under your $HOME.

You can display the path to that directory with snow info:

you@machine:~$ snow info
SNOW RUN against dev1234.service-now.com instance.
Temp directory: /home/you/.snow-run/tmp/dev1234.service-now.com
Protect that directory from being read by others.

4. Elevate roles (if needed) If your instance requires the security_admin role to run background scripts, you might need to elevate roles for the user:

snow elevate

Usage

Running arbitrary background script

You can run arbitrary background script stored on your computer as if you entered it into the background script form in ServiceNow:

snow run FILE
# or write the script directly in terminal (read it from the standard input):
snow run

Example:

you@machine:~$ snow run example.js
There are 54 records in the incident table.
Current user: admin

Searching for script includes by name

snow scriptinclude search STRING

Example:

you@machine:~$ snow scriptinclude search cmdb
DiscoveryCMDBUtil            This class contains useful utility functions for interacting with the CMDB API for identification and reconciliation.
CMDBDuplicateRemediatorUtil  Utility  for the CMDB Duplicate Remediator
CMDBRelationshipAjax         Returns available CMDB relationships
CMDBHealthTaskTables         Task tables involved in CMDB Health Audit and Dashboarding
CMDBDuplicateTaskUtils       Utility class to manually create Remediate Duplicate Task with duplicates that are of independent type
CMDBTransformUtil            CMDB Utility class for calling Identification and Reconciliation API within transform maps
CMDBAccessCheckUtil          Utility function for CMDB access check.
CMDBItem                     Class for Configuration Item helper functions

Inspecting a script include or another object

snow inspect SCRIPT_INCLUDE_OR_EXPRESSION

Example:

you@machine:~$ snow inspect GlideRecordUtil
Type:            function
Own keys:
Prototype keys:
                initialize                 function
                getCIGR                    function
                getGR                      function
                getFields                  function
                populateFromGR             function
                mergeToGR                  function
                getTables                  function
                getGlideRecordByAttribute  function
                type                       string

Use with caution. You can accidentaly execute code with side effects!

Evaluating an Expression

snow eval EXPR

Example:

you@machine:~$ snow eval 1+1
2
you@machine:~$ snow eval 'gs.getUserName()'
admin

Ever wondered how certain function looks like, what arguments it takes, but too lazy to read its script include? eval may come in handy here too.

you@machine:~$ snow eval 'GlideRecordUtil.prototype.getGR'

function (base_table, sys_id) {
var gr = new GlideRecord(base_table);
if (!gr.get(sys_id)) {
return null;
}
var klass = gr.getRecordClassName();
if (klass == base_table) {
return gr;
}
gr = new GlideRecord(klass);
if (!gr.get(sys_id)) {
return null;
}
return gr;
}

Use with caution. You can accidentally execute code with side effects!

Searching for Tables

snow table search [-l] STRING

By default, this command searches for table names containing STRING. The -l option changes the behaviour to search in table labels.

Example:

you@machine:~$ snow table search properties
cmdb_properties              CMDB Properties
sys_properties_category      System Property Category
sys_properties               System Property
std_change_properties        Standard Change Properties
sys_properties_category_m2m  Category Property

you@machine:~$ snow table search -l properties # Searching by label
cmdb_properties        CMDB Properties
std_change_properties  Standard Change Properties

Listing Table Fields

snow table fields TABLE_NAME

This will output all fields on the table (including inherited fields), their labels and data type.

Example:

you@machine:~$ snow table fields incident
parent                    Parent                    reference
made_sla                  Made SLA                  boolean
caused_by                 Caused by Change          reference
watch_list                Watch list                glide_list
upon_reject               Upon reject               string
sys_updated_on            Updated                   glide_date_time
location                  Location                  reference        cmn_(…)

Querying Records

snow record search [options] TABLE_NAME
# snow r search works as well

Perform a query on a table.

• -q|--query ENCODED_QUERY limit results to those matching an encoded query (see ServiceNow)
• -o|--order-by FIELD return records ordered by FIELD; this parameter can be specified multiple times
• -od|--order-by-desc FIELD return records ordered by FIELD in descending order; this parameter can be specified multiple times
• -f|--fields FIELDS comma-separated list of fields to return
• -l|--limit N the maximum number of records to return
• --no-header omit column names that would normally be printed
• --sys-id shortcut for -f sys_id --no-header

Example:

you@machine:~$ snow r search -l 2 cmdb_ci
skip_sync  operational_status  sys_updated_on       discovery_source  first_discovered  

false      1                   2010-11-25 10:31:55                                      
false      1                   2010-11-25 10:57:20                                      

Example:

you@machine:~$ snow r search sys_script_include -l 2 -f name,description -q nameSTARTSWITHcmdb -o sys_created_by --order-by-desc sys_created_on
name                         description
CMDBDuplicateRemediatorUtil  Utility for the CMDB Duplicate Remediator
CMDBRelationshipAjax         Returns available CMDB relationships

Counting Records

snow record-count [-q|--query ENCODED_QUERY] TABLE_NAME
# note the minus between record and count

Perform a query on a table and count results.

• -q|--query limit results to those matching an encoded query (see ServiceNow)

Example:

you@machine:~$ snow record-count -q "sys_created_on>=2018-01-01" incident
37

Deleting Records

snow record delete TABLE_NAME SYS_IDS...
# or
snow record delete TABLE_NAME -q|--query ENCODED_QUERY
# or
snow record delete TABLE_NAME -a|--all

Delete record(s).

• TABLE_NAME name of the table to delete records from
• SYS_IDS... a whitespace-separated list of sys_ids to remove. If omitted and no other options are specified, sys_ids are read from the standard input
• -q|--query encoded query to select multiple records to be deleted at once
• -a|--all delete all records in that table

Options -q and -a require user confirmation.

Example:

you@machine:~$ snow r search incident -q short_descriptionSTARTSWITHTest --sys-id | snow r delete incident

you@machine:~$ snow r delete sys_user 6816f79cc0a8016401c5a33be04be441 abdef79cc0a8016401c5a33be04fg998

you@machine:~$ snow record delete incident -q "sys_created_on>=2018-11-01"
There are 8 matching records in the incident table.
Delete them? [Y/N]: y

you@machine:~$ snow r delete u_pet -a
There are 1 matching records in the u_pet table.
Delete them? [Y/N]: y

Creating or Updating Tables (EXPERIMENTAL)

snow table-create TABLE_NAME field1:field_type1 field2:field_typ2 ...

Create or update a ServiceNow table.

• field_name is a database field name, e.g. u_name
• field_type is one of: string integer boolean glide_date glide_date_time currency price reference (reference doesn't work properly yet)

You can specify multiple fields at once.

This command is highly experimental!

Example:

you@machine:~$ snow table-create u_pet u_pet_name:string u_birthdate:glide_date
TableCreate for: u_pet
DBTable.create() for: u_pet
Replication is not enabled on table: u_pet, not queueing replication table create special db event
LicensingTableCreateListener: Initializing licensing attrs for table u_pet
[0:00:00.426] Table create for: u_pet
Begin ResourceSupport.buildTableResources(u_pet, undefined)
End ResourceSupport.buildTableResources
OK

We can check it has been created:

you@machine:~$ snow table search u_pet
u_pet  Pet

and perhaps see if something is in there:

you@machine:~$ snow r search u_pet -f u_birthdate,u_pet_name,sys_created_by
u_birthdate  u_pet_name  sys_created_by

2019-02-04   Billy       admin

Extensions

Besides running arbitrary scripts with snow run FILE, which don't require any special modification, the tool also allows for writing custom extensions.

Extensions are regular JavaScript files implementing a certain interface and stored in the js subdirectory of the project.
All of the ServiceNow server-side script API, such as GlideRecord, gs etc. is available.

Each extension must declare and implement the following method:

function $exec(/* any number of arguments */) {
   // any ServiceNow-compatible JavaScript code
}

Example 1 - File js/hello.js without Arguments:

function $exec() {
   gs.print("Hello!");
}

Such a script can be executed in two interchangeable ways:

snow exec hello
# Or simply
snow hello

you@machine:~$ snow hello
Hello!

Example 2 - File js/hello-name.js with Arguments:

function $exec(firstname, lastname) {
   gs.print("Hello " + firstname + " " + lastname);
}

All arguments are passed as strings automatically:

you@machine:~$ snow hello-name John Doe
Hello John Doe

Example 3 - File js/echo.js Formatted Output:

Any output produced by extensions is automatically formatted as a table with columns identified by tabulator (\t). Instead of producing output with TABs manually, the $echo(/* any number of arguments */) function can be called with any number of arguments representing columns. Unless only one argument is provided, any new-lines strings are automatically converted to spaces to prevent the resulting table from being wrapped to the next line. If this is not the desired behaviour, call $echo("This is \n New line") or gs.print("This is \n New line")instead.

function $exec(firstname, lastname) {
    $echo(1, firstname, lastname);
    // equivalent to:
    // gs.print("1\t" + firstname + "\t" + lastname)
    $echo(2, "Jan", "Jesenius\nNotANewLine");
    $echo("New\nline");
 }

you@machine:~$ snow echo John Doe
1     John  Doe
2     Jan   Jesenius NotANewLine
New
line

Example 4 - File js/echo.js with Help on Usage:

Extensions can define their own $help() function to print usage when the script is invoked with either --help or -h.

Note: The help function is also executed remotely!

function $exec(firstname, lastname) {
    $echo(1, firstname, lastname);
    // equivalent to:
    // gs.print("1\t" + firstname + "\t" + lastname)
    $echo(2, "Jan", "Jesenius\nNotANewLine");
    $echo("New\nline");
 }
 
function $help() {
    $echo("Print out name and some stuff around");
    $echo("Usage: firstName, lastName");
}

you@machine:~$ snow echo -h
Print out name and some stuff around
Usage: firstName, lastName
New
line

---

SNOW-RUN. Terminal interface to ServiceNow.
Copyright (C) 2019 Martin Chovanec martin@chovanecm.cz

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.