Adventures in LogParser, HTA and charts

In my earlier post “Slicing and dicing with LogParser & VBA” I had mentioned that LogParser is really a slick Microsoft utility that can be used to obtain information on files, event logs, IIS logs etc. Continuing on the journey in LogParser I came to realize that you can also create cool charts with output of LogParser which can be either a line graph, a pie chart , a 3D pie chart a 3D bar chart etc. The options are many. So I started to play around with the utility.

To create a chart you can run the command from a LogParser prompt. Some samples are shown below

LogParser “SELECT TOP 10 TO_LOWERCASE (Name) AS NewName, Size INTO .\chart.gif, Path, LastWriteTime FROM ‘” & files & “‘ WHERE NOT Attributes LIKE ‘%D%’ AND NOT ATTRIBUTES LIKE ‘%H%’ ORDER BY Size DESC ” & “-chartType:column3D -i:FS –chartTitle: “My chart”

This will create a gif file with a 3D bar chart with the top 10 files by size

Similarly you could also create a 3D pie chart as follows

LogParser “SELECT TOP 5 Name, Size INTO c:\Chart.gif FROM C:\*.* ORDER BY Size DESC” -chartType:PieExploded3D -i:FS

However I wanted to create these charts in a HTA application and display it dynamically along with the output of LogParser. Thankfully the procedure is very similar. Here is what you need to do for this.

To do this you need to set up the environment as below. I have used VBscript.

Set objLogParser = CreateObject(“MSUtil.LogQuery”)

Set objInputFormat = CreateObject(“MSUtil.LogQuery.FileSystemInputFormat”)

Then you need to specify the chart options

Set objOutputChartFormat = CreateObject(“MSUtil.LogQuery.ChartOutputFormat”)

objOutputChartFormat.groupSize = “400×300”

objOutputChartFormat.fileType = “GIF”

objOutputChartFormat.chartType = “Column3D”

objOutputChartFormat.categories = “ON”

objOutputChartFormat.values = “ON”

objOutputChartFormat.legend = “ON”

Finally create a LogParser query and execute it as shown below where “topN” & the directory path “files” is taken as input from the user

strQuery1 = “SELECT TOP ” & topN & ” Name, Size INTO c:\tes\filesize.gif FROM ” & files & ” WHERE NOT Attributes LIKE ‘%D%’ AND NOT ATTRIBUTES LIKE ‘%H%’ ORDER BY Size DESC ”

objOutputChartFormat.config = “c:\test\FileSize.js”

Set objRecordSet1 = objLogParser.ExecuteBatch(strQuery1, objInputFormat , objOutputChartFormat )

To specify the chart title, the X axis & Y axis a javascript/VBscript file has to be created as below (FileSize.js) which is specified in objOutputChartFormat.config

FileSize.js (contents)

// Set the title above the chart.

chart.HasTitle = true;

chart.Title.Caption = “Top N files by size”

// Set the border style for the chart.

chartSpace.Border.Color = “#000000”;

chartSpace.Border.Weight = 2;

// Change the background color for the plot area.

chart.PlotArea.Interior.Color = “#f0f0f0”;

// Set the font size for the chart values.

chart.SeriesCollection(0).DataLabelsCollection(0).Font.Size = 6;

// Set the caption below the chart.