topic Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API in Getting Data In

How to generate PDF from view in REST API?

kknopp — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 14:08:34 GMT

I am using Splunk 6.1.1 and currently have a form that takes an integer input (foo) and timerange. The URL for this view after entering the values is https://splunk/app/app_name/view_name?earliest=-30d&latest=now&form.foo=1#. I then generate a PDF from this page. Thing is, I need this form for about 650 instances of foo, and I'd like to run it once a month.

I can't schedule the view since it requires input, and I refuse to create 650 instance of the form without input. My hope is to create a python or ruby script that calls this view with the required input, generates a PDF from the output, and gives me the document metadata so I can store elsewhere. Is this a thing? Looking through the API docs, I see lots for scheduled searches, but this isn't a scheduled search. Any assistance would be much appreciated.

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

martin_mueller — Sat, 06 Feb 2016 22:15:05 GMT

There is a /services/pdfgen/render endpoint, but it doesn't appear to be documented. You might be able to reverse-engineer how to call it from $SPLUNK_HOME/share/splunk/search_mrsparkle/exposed/js/util/pdf_utils.js#downloadReportFromXML(), that's what gets called underneath when you click the Export PDF button.

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

kknopp — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 14:38:03 GMT

interesting. I'll give it a shot, and let you know what I find. Thank you Martin.

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

cwue — Sun, 17 Apr 2016 17:34:27 GMT

The /services/pdfgen/render/ endpoint takes a view [as answered here: https://answers.splunk.com/answers/223655/can-i-export-pdf-via-rest.html], but luckily also a input-dashboard-xml input, which accepts xml-dashboards - as long as all tokens/variables are resolved (!).

To generate a ton of different reports based on the same view/dashboard but different search parameters I wrote a python script.

Using this script all you have to do is
- save the dasboard code as .xml-file
- figure out for which report you want to replace which tokens and have a list of those tokens for every report.
- hand over a JSON List with tokens and their respective values
{"tokenlist":[{'token':'$example$' 'value':'value for individual search'}, {'token':'$example2$' 'value':'searchstring'}]
- run the script which will send the compatible dashboard code to the API and download the resulting pdf report

So my generateReport(tokenlist) function looks like this:
(Disclaimer: this is simplified to get the concept across- I stripped error detection for invalid reports, logging, metadata creation and the like - which is crucial if you plan on automatically mailing those reports)

# import requests

with open('dashboardFile.xml','rb') as XMLfile:
    XMLDashboard =XMLfile.read().replace('\n', '')
    XMLDashboard = XMLDashboard.replace('<', '%26lt%3B')  # otherwise the API will complain

# Replace all tokens in the XMLCode
for t in tokenlist:
    XMLDashboard = XMLDashboard.replace(t['token'], t['value'])

# Send XML code to endpoint, answer should be a pdf file
r = requests.get('https://splunkhost:8089/services/pdfgen/render', auth=(splunkuser, splunkpass), params={'input-dashboard-xml':XMLDashboard,'paper-size':'a4-landscape'})

if r.status_code == 200:
    with open('report_file.pdf', 'wb') as pdffile:
        pdffile.write(r.content)

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

anwarmian — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 12:51:42 GMT

This works great. Thanks a lot, cwue. Those who don't have access to "requests" library can use curl command like the following:

import subprocess
file_out = "/home/splunk/pdf_dashboards/yourpdfile.pdf"

subprocess.call(["curl","-G", "-sku", "your_user_name:your_password","-k", Url, "--data-urlencode", "input-dashboard-xml=" + XMLDashboard,"-d","namespace=yourAppName", "-d","paper-size=a4-landscape"], stdout=file_out)

if you are using "--data-urlencode" then you don't have to use the following two lines:
XMLDashboard=XMLfile.read().replace('\n', '')
XMLDashboard = XMLDashboard.replace('<', '%26lt%3B') # otherwise the API will complain

Good Luck and Thanks to cwue once again.

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

JohnRiddoch — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 13:24:34 GMT

Thanks both for this help - however, if you want to do it from a shell script, this works:
- save dashboard as "mydash.xml" with appropriate parameters/timeline set
- run this curl command:
- curl -G -sku admin:${mypass} "https://localhost:8089/services/pdfgen/render" --data-urlencode "input-dashboard-xml=$(cat mydash.xml)" -d namespace=search -d paper-size=a4-landscape > mydash.pdf

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

anwarmian — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 16:48:56 GMT

Were any of you successful in creating a pdf in linux using REST API and emailing to Windows box and check if the pdf show properly? When I created a pdf using the above method in Linux (using python) it looks great in linux but after sending it to Windows via email Windows displays the pdf with blank pages.

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

surekhasplunk — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 10:22:41 GMT

Hi @anwarmian and @cwue,

By using this approach doesn it resolve the problems with pdf renderinng.
Does it retain the same color codes which are used in the dashbaord
Does it retain the same spacing and panels for page as that of the dashboard ?

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

rblack88 — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 15:49:30 GMT

Thanks cwue! In case anyone else gets errors saying that it couldn't find the end of a start tag, adding XMLDashboard=XMLDashboard.replace(' ', '%20') should work!

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

curtin1061 — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 18:25:06 GMT

Hello,
Does anyone have the full script/xml files needed ... the reference link above is no longer valid.

I'd love to see the python code, I'm not sure where I find the 'dashboardFile.xml' or what this file should look like.

Python and curl examples appreciated.
Craig

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

cwue — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 19:36:24 GMT

Hi curtin1061,

it's been a while but I just checked our git and this is the relevant code of my program to download the dashboard as xml.
SplunkUsername, DashboardName, AppName and SessionKey are variables.

import io, requests, json
endpoint = 'https://splunkhost:8089/servicesNS/' + SplunkUsername + '/' + AppName + '/data/ui/views/' + DashboardName
    r = requests.get(endpoint, headers={'Authorization': 'Splunk ' + SessionKey}, params={'output_mode': 'json'}, verify=False)
    dashboardcode = r.json()['entry'][0]['content']['eai:data']

    with io.open('dashboard.xml', 'w', encoding='utf8') as f:
        f.write(dashboardcode)
    print("Saved dashboard.xml")

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

curtin1061 — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 17:12:33 GMT

Hi cwue,
Thanks for this ... is this your internal git repo? or any chance its public?
I'm a splunk newbie just hacking my way through automating some dashboards. I've done python for a long time (and love it). Any pointers towards python/splunk snipets/code appreciated.
Regards,
Craig

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

rblack88 — Tue, 30 Oct 2018 18:36:54 GMT

I have not contributed to this repo in several months, but this might help you. https://github.com/BryceKopan/SlackSplunkBot/blob/master/src/RESTSplunkMethods.py

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

Iriseng94 — Wed, 15 May 2019 04:45:53 GMT

HI ,

Understand that this rest api able to generate a pdf report , I am not sure where should i locate the script ? What if i want to schedule the export of pdf like daily monthly or weekly ? Should i do a scheduling of report from splunk and action behind is to run a scripts ?

Any detailed steps for newbie ?

Thanks in advance .

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

Iriseng94 — Wed, 15 May 2019 04:46:52 GMT

HI ,

Any detailed steps for newbie ?

Thanks in advance .

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

conikhil — Sat, 20 Jul 2019 08:22:36 GMT

Does this work for dynamic token like eval, condition, init Because tokens seems to be static replacement and must be passed/replaced before sending to api?

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

conikhil — Sat, 20 Jul 2019 08:25:19 GMT

Does this work for dynamic token like eval, condition, init Because tokens seems to be static replacement and must be passed/replaced before sending to api?

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

clamarkv — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 22:57:41 GMT

this thread was very helpful in figuring out how to do this, however i did have some problems with the gt (>) and lt(<) operators in my searches.

to work around this i wrapped them in CDATA tags:

status<![CDATA[>]]>199 AND status<![CDATA[<]]>300

if anyone else is interested, this is my "final" script:

import requests import json import os from logzero import setup_logger logger = setup_logger(name="logger", level=20) splunk_endpoint = os.environ["SPLUNK_ENDPOINT"] splunk_username = os.environ["SPLUNK_USERNAME"] splunk_password = os.environ["SPLUNK_PASSWORD"] with open("dashboard.xml", encoding="utf-8") as xml_file: xml_dashboard = xml_file.read() with open("client_list.json", encoding="utf-8") as json_file: client_list = json.loads(json_file.read()) for client in client_list: logger.info(f"generating dashboard pdf for {client['name']} [{client['id']}]") # replace tokens in dashboard this_xml_dashboard = xml_dashboard.replace("--CLIENT--NAME--", client["name"]) this_xml_dashboard = xml_dashboard.replace("--CLIENT--ID--", client["id"]) # send xml dashboard to render endpoint render_url = f"{splunk_endpoint}/services/pdfgen/render" render_response = requests.post( render_url, auth=(splunk_username, splunk_password), params={ "input-dashboard-xml": this_xml_dashboard.encode(), "paper-size": "a4-landscape", } ) logger.info(f"render_response: {render_response.status_code}") # render endpoint returns a pdf if render_response.status_code == 200: outfile = (f"./output/dashboard-{client['name'].replace(' ', '_').lower()}.pdf") with open(outfile, "wb") as pdffile: pdffile.write(render_response.content) logger.info(f"wrote {filename} [{render_response.headers['Content-Length']} bytes]")

hope this helps.

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

splunknewbie — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 10:21:40 GMT

I don't get why you open the XML file binary. I get string handling error if I do it so.

Bu I have another problem. I open the xml file like this

replacelist = [("$pool_cust_lic_pool$", "{0}".format(customer_pool_name))]

with open(DASHBOARD_FILE, 'r') as XMLfile:
XMLDashboard = XMLfile.read().replace('\n', '')

for replacement in replacelist:
XMLDashboard = XMLDashboard.replace(replacement[0], replacement[1])

r = requests.get(SPLUNKURL, auth=(SPLUNKUSER, SPLUNKPS),
params={'input-dashboard-xml': XMLDashboard, 'paper-size': 'a4-landscape'}, verify=False)

part of the dashboard content:

<query> foreach "License-pool size in GB" [eval val2='<<FIELD>>'] <query>

#query is shorted. Since I have << and >> in my dashboard xml. I get the following error.</query>

An error occured creating weekly reporting for pool auto_generated_pool_download-trial for cw 5
400 Unable to render PDF.<br/><ul><li>Bailing out of Integrated PDF Generation. Exception raised while preparing to render "Untitled" to PDF. StartTag: invalid element name, line 1, column 3533 (<string>, line 1)</li></ul>

The column 3533 indicate the line <<FIELD>> in the dashboard xml.

The dashboard works fine. I can request and convert it in pdf via curl

curl -X POST -u admin:Changeme1 -k 'https://localhost:8089/services/pdfgen/render?input-dashboard='license_test' &namespace=search &paper-size=a4-landscape' > test.pdf

but it doesn't work via my python script

Re: Generate PDF from View in REST API

splunknewbie — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 13:16:40 GMT

I solve the problem after use the CDATA for my queries

<![CDATA[ your search query here ]]>