Using HTML to create PDF Reports (Part 2)

by Oct 7, 2022

Categories

Tags

Administration agent-based monitoring Agentless Monitoring alert responses alert thresholds alerting Alerts Amazon Aurora Amazon EC2 Amazon RDS Amazon RDS / Aurora Amazon RDS for SQL Server Amazon Redshift Amazon S3 Amazon Web Services (AWS) Analytics application monitoring Aqua Data Studio automation availability Azure Azure SQL Database azure sql managed instance Azure VM backup Backup and recovery backup and restore backup compression backup status Backup Strategy backups big data Blocking bug fixes business architecture business data objects business intelligence business process modeling business process models capacity planning change management cloud cloud database cloud database monitoring cloud infrastructure cloud migration cloud providers Cloud Readiness Cloud Services cloud storage cloud virtual machine cloud VM clusters code completion collaboration compliance compliance audit compliance audits compliance manager compliance reporting conference configuration connect to database cpu Cross Platform custom counters Custom Views customer survey customer testimonials Dark Theme dashboards data analysis Data Analytics data architect data architecture data breaches Data Collector data governance data lakes data lineage data management data model data modeler data modeling data models data privacy data protection data security data security measures data sources data visualization data warehouse database database administration database administrator database automation database backup database backups database capacity database changes database community database connection database design database developer database developers database development database diversity Database Engine Tuning Advisor database fragmentation database GUI database IDE database indexes database inventory management database locks database management database migration database monitoring database navigation database optimization database performance Database Permissions database platforms database profiling database queries database recovery database replication database restore database schema database security database support database synchronization database tools database transactions database tuning database-as-a-service databases DB Change Manager DB Optimizer DB PowerStudio DB2 DBA DBaaS DBArtisan dBase DBMS DDL Debugging defragmentation Demo diagnostic manager diagnostics dimensional modeling disaster recovery Download drills embedded database Encryption End-user Experience entity-relationship model ER/Studio ER/Studio Data Architect ER/Studio Enterprise Team Edition events execution plans free tools galera cluster GDPR Getting Started Git GitHub Google Cloud Hadoop Healthcare high availability HIPAA Hive hybrid clouds Hyper-V IDERA IDERA ACE Index Analyzer index optimization infrastructure as a service (IaaS) infrastructure monitoring installation Integrated Development Environment interbase Inventory Manager IT infrastructure Java JD Edwards JSON licensing load test load testing logical data model macOS macros managed cloud database managed cloud databases MariaDB memory memorystorage memoryusage metadata metric baselines metric thresholds Microsoft Azure Microsoft Azure SQL Database Microsoft PowerShell Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft Windows MongoDB monitoring Monitoring Tools Monyog multiple platforms MySQL news newsletter NoSQL Notifications odbc optimization Oracle PeopleSoft performance Performance Dashboards performance metrics performance monitoring performance schema performance tuning personally identifiable information physical data model Platform platform as a service (PaaS) PostgreSQL Precise Precise for Databases Precise for Oracle Precise for SQL Server Precise Management Database (PMDB) product updates Project Migration public clouds Query Analyzer query builder query monitor query optimization query performance Query Store query tool query tuning query-level waits Rapid SQL rdbms real time monitoring Real User Monitoring recovery regulations relational databases Releases Reporting Reports repository Restore reverse engineering Roadmap sample SAP Scalability Security Policy Security Practices server monitoring Server performance server-level waits Service Level Agreement SkySQL slow query SNMP snowflake source control SQL SQL Admin Toolset SQL CM SQL code SQL coding SQL Compliance Manager SQL Defrag Manager sql development SQL Diagnostic Manager SQL Diagnostic Manager for MySQL SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server SQL Diagnostic Manager Pro SQL DM SQL Doctor SQL Enterprise Job Manager SQl IM SQL Inventory Manager SQL Management Suite SQL Monitoring SQL Performance SQL Quality SQL query SQL Query Tuner SQL Safe Backup SQL script SQL Secure SQL Security Suite SQL Server sql server alert SQL Server Migration SQL Server Performance SQL Server Recommendations SQL Server Security SQL statement history SQL tuning SQL Virtual Database sqlmemory sqlserver SQLyog Storage Storage Performance structured data Subversion Support tempdb tempdb data temporal data Tips and Tricks troubleshooting universal data models universal mapping unstructured data Uptime Infrastructure Monitor user experience user permissions Virtual Machine (VM) web services webinar What-if analysis WindowsPowerShell

HTML can be a simple way of formatting data for output reports. In this second part we illustrate how you convert properties that contain arrays to string lists. Arrays cannot be correctly displayed as text, so this problem applies to both HTML reports and exporting data to CSV.

Have a look: the code below composes a HTML report with all of your services which is where we left off at the end of part 1:

$path = "$env:temp\report.html"

# get data from any cmdlet you wish
$data = Get-Service | Sort-Object -Property Status, Name

# compose style sheet
$stylesheet = "
<style>
body { background-color:#AAEEEE;
font-family:Monospace;
font-size:10pt; }
table,td, th { border:1px solid blue;}
th { color:#00008B;
background-color:#EEEEAA; 
font-size: 12pt;}
table { margin-left:30px; }
h2 {
font-family:Tahoma;
color:#6D7B8D;
}
h1{color:#DC143C;}
h5{color:#DC143C;}
</style>
"

# output to HTML
$data | ConvertTo-Html -Title Report -Head $stylesheet | Set-Content -Path $path -Encoding UTF8

Invoke-Item -Path $path

When you look at the report, you notice that some columns contain data types instead of data, i.e. RequiredServices and DependentServices. The reason is because these properties contain arrays. To display the property content correctly, you need to first convert the arrays to string lists.

Here is a function that automatically detects properties that contain arrays and replaces these with string lists:

function Convert-ArrayToStringList
{
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory, ValueFromPipeline)]
        $PipelineObject
    )
    process
    {
        $Property = $PipelineObject.psobject.Properties | 
                        Where-Object { $_.Value -is [Array] } | 
                        Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name
                        
        foreach ($item in $Property)
        {
            $PipelineObject.$item = $PipelineObject.$item -join ','
        
          
        }

        return $PipelineObject
    }
}

For this to work, you first must run your results through Select-Object in order to get a copy of the objects that you can then manipulate. Convert-ArrayToStringList can be very helpful for creating CSV exports as well. The code below creates the services list as a CSV file and makes sure all properties are readable, then loads the CSV file into Microsoft Excel:

$Path = "$env:temp\report.csv"

Get-Service |
Select-Object -Property * |
Convert-ArrayToStringList |
Export-Csv -NoTypeInformation -Encoding UTF8 -Path $Path -UseCulture

Start-Process -FilePath excel -ArgumentList $Path

Here is the full script that now creates a services report with all properties readable:

$path = "$env:temp\report.html"

# get data from any cmdlet you wish
$data = Get-Service | Sort-Object -Property Status, Name

# helper function to convert arrays to string lists
function Convert-ArrayToStringList
{
    param
    (
        [Parameter(Mandatory, ValueFromPipeline)]
        $PipelineObject
    )
    process
    {
        $Property = $PipelineObject.psobject.Properties | 
                        Where-Object { $_.Value -is [Array] } | 
                        Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name
                        
        foreach ($item in $Property)
        {
            $PipelineObject.$item = $PipelineObject.$item -join ','
        
          
        }

        return $PipelineObject
    }
}


# compose style sheet
$stylesheet = "
    <style>
    body { background-color:#AAEEEE;
    font-family:Monospace;
    font-size:10pt; }
    table,td, th { border:1px solid blue;}
    th { color:#00008B;
    background-color:#EEEEAA; 
    font-size: 12pt;}
    table { margin-left:30px; }
    h2 {
    font-family:Tahoma;
    color:#6D7B8D;
    }
    h1{color:#DC143C;}
    h5{color:#DC143C;}
    </style>
"

# output to HTML
$data | 
# make sure you use Select-Object to copy the objects
Select-Object -Property * |
Convert-ArrayToStringList |
ConvertTo-Html -Title Report -Head $stylesheet | 
Set-Content -Path $path -Encoding UTF8

Invoke-Item -Path $path 

 


Twitter This Tip! ReTweet this Tip!