“Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
— Benjamin Franklin
Every once in a while I am chasing some issue or tying to remember how I did something and I know the answer is in the system somewhere, but I’m just not sure where. Since I mainly deal with Javascript code, what I would really like is a way to search all of the places in which script might be stored looking for some term or phrase. And I mean all of the places, including places that might come up later in future versions. What I really want to do is dynamically look at all of the tables and find all of the columns that might store script and then search all of those columns in all of those tables. Fortunately, because of the way in which the Now Platform is constructed, you can easily do exactly that.
The sys_dictionary table holds all of the information on all of the columns in all of the tables, including the column type. There are several ServiceNow column types that might contain script, but fortunately for us, they all contain the word script in their names. That makes it relatively easy to search the dictionary for all of the script columns in all of the tables:
var table = {};
var columnGR = new GlideRecord('sys_dictionary');
columnGR.addEncodedQuery('internal_typeCONTAINSscript^active=true');
columnGR.query();
while (columnGR.next()) {
var tableName = columnGR.getDisplayValue('name');
var fieldName = columnGR.getDisplayValue('element');
if (tableName && fieldName && !tableName.startsWith('var__m_')) {
if (!table[tableName]) {
table[tableName] = [];
}
table[tableName].push(fieldName);
}
}
This script builds a map keyed by table name that contains an array of script columns for each table. Before I add a column to the map, I make sure that there is both a field name and a table name, and I also filter out all of the variable mapping tables, as those don’t contain any scripts and some of them actually cause problems when I attempt to use them. Once we have established our target map, it is simply a matter of stepping through it and querying each table for the presence of your search argument in any of those columns:
var found = [];
for (tableName in table) {
var query = '';
var separator = '';
for (var i=0; i<table[tableName].length; i++) {
query += separator;
query += table[tableName][i];
query += 'CONTAINS';
query += string;
separator = 'OR';
}
var scriptGR = new GlideRecord(tableName);
scriptGR.addEncodedQuery(query);
scriptGR.query();
while (scriptGR.next()) {
found.push({table: tableName, tableName: scriptGR.getLabel(), sys_id: scriptGR.getUniqueValue(), name: scriptGR.getDisplayValue('name') || scriptGR.getDisplayValue() || scriptGR.getUniqueValue()});
}
}
return found;
This portion of the script builds an array of objects containing the table, table name, name, and sys_id of any records found during the search. I bundled the whole thing into a Script Include that I called ScriptUtils, and you can see the entire thing here:
var ScriptUtils = Class.create();
ScriptUtils.prototype = {
initialize: function() {
},
findInScript: function(string) {
var table = {};
var found = [];
var columnGR = new GlideRecord('sys_dictionary');
columnGR.addEncodedQuery('internal_typeCONTAINSscript^active=true');
columnGR.query();
while (columnGR.next()) {
var tableName = columnGR.getDisplayValue('name');
var fieldName = columnGR.getDisplayValue('element');
if (tableName && fieldName && !tableName.startsWith('var__m_')) {
if (!table[tableName]) {
table[tableName] = [];
}
table[tableName].push(fieldName);
}
}
for (tableName in table) {
var query = '';
var separator = '';
for (var i=0; i<table[tableName].length; i++) {
query += separator;
query += table[tableName][i];
query += 'CONTAINS';
query += string;
separator = 'OR';
}
var scriptGR = new GlideRecord(tableName);
scriptGR.addEncodedQuery(query);
scriptGR.query();
while (scriptGR.next()) {
found.push({table: tableName, tableName: scriptGR.getLabel(), sys_id: scriptGR.getUniqueValue(), name: scriptGR.getDisplayValue('name') || scriptGR.getDisplayValue() || scriptGR.getUniqueValue()});
}
}
return found;
},
type: 'ScriptUtils'
};
To test is out, we can can select Scripts – Background from the sidebar menu and enter something like this:
gs.info(JSON.stringify(new ScriptUtils().findInScript('xxx'), null, 4));
After running the above script, I received the following output:
[
{
"table": "discovery_proc_handler",
"tableName": "Process Handler",
"sys_id": "1f2473269733200010cb1bd74b297576",
"name": "Java parameters"
},
{
"table": "sys_script",
"tableName": "Business Rule",
"sys_id": "4532f571bf320100710071a7bf073929",
"name": "Obfuscate password"
},
{
"table": "sys_script_execution_history",
"tableName": "Script Execution History",
"sys_id": "807208e92ffb48d0ddadfe7cf699b696",
"name": "Created 2020-03-26 05:55:27"
},
{
"table": "sys_script_include",
"tableName": "Script Include",
"sys_id": "326b53699f3010008f88ed93ee4bcc2b",
"name": "ScrumSecurityManagerDefault"
},
{
"table": "sys_script_include",
"tableName": "Script Include",
"sys_id": "3f7d6f17537103003248cfa018dc347c",
"name": "PwdResetPageInfo"
},
{
"table": "sys_script_include",
"tableName": "Script Include",
"sys_id": "57042a36932012001aa1f4b8b67ffb95",
"name": "TourBuilderUtility"
},
{
"table": "sys_script_include",
"tableName": "Script Include",
"sys_id": "88c548dc37010100dcd48c00dfbe5d2e",
"name": "SnmpIdentityInfoParser"
},
{
"table": "sys_script_include",
"tableName": "Script Include",
"sys_id": "8dbee16b530203003248cfa018dc349e",
"name": "PwdResetPageInfo_V2"
},
{
"table": "sys_script_include",
"tableName": "Script Include",
"sys_id": "91a92c70733023008b516cb63cf6a79e",
"name": "CommunityCacheUtilSNCJSC"
},
{
"table": "sys_script_include",
"tableName": "Script Include",
"sys_id": "a7ac57b7c710320003fa9c569b976312",
"name": "MIDUserConnectivity"
},
{
"table": "sys_script_include",
"tableName": "Script Include",
"sys_id": "c54c989f37612100dcd48c00dfbe5df4",
"name": "CiSchema"
},
{
"table": "sys_script_include",
"tableName": "Script Include",
"sys_id": "ee735ba66713220089ec9a6617415a75",
"name": "CommunityForumImpl"
},
{
"table": "sys_script_include",
"tableName": "Script Include",
"sys_id": "eee51271eb223100c46ac2eef106fed4",
"name": "AddScriptedRESTVersionAjax"
}
]
Now, there are obviously better ways to format and display that information, but that would be an entire project on its own, so we’ll just save that exercise for another time.
