Microsoft LogParser 2.2 Tutorial V

Click here to see part IV.

I wanted to take a little break before jumping into C# code and logparser to discuss template files. Template files allow a nicely formatted html style and some cases can be used for other things. OK, let's take a look now on how it works:

--select from eventlog
LogParser -i:EVT -o:TPL -tpl:c:\MyTPL.tpl "SELECT TimeGenerated, EventTypeName, SourceName, Message INTO MyLog.htm FROM \\MyServer\System WHERE EventTypeName = 'Error event' OR EventTypeName = 'Warning event'" -iCheckpoint:checkpoint.lpc

Most of this query you should already know. We are selecting warning or errors from the system event log. The switches include EVT for the event log, output of TPL and a .tpl file location. We are also including a checkpoint file to only look at events that have changed since the last time this query ran. Also, note that we are saving the results into an htm file.

Now we have the TPL file:

<l;pbody><l;table border="1">
<l;tbody><l;tr>
<l;td width="10%">%TimeGenerated%<l;/td>
<l;td width="10%"><l;span >%EventTypeName%<l;/span><l;/td>
<l;td width="10%">%SourceName%<l;/td>
<l;td width="70%">%Message%<l;/td>

<l;/tr>
<l;/tbody><l;/table><l;/lpbody>

All we are really doing with the tpl file is match the fields you selected in the query to the tpl file. The basic tpl files are simple html with just
<l;lp

An example I found online a while ago and can't seem to find the source again used tpl with AD. The idea was to use logparser to read a CSV and format it so that LDIF can then import the file. Here is the basic csv file created using csvde from Microsoft:

csvde -f c:\test.csv
-d ou=Users,dc=dev,dc=com
-r (objectclass=user)  -l dn,mail

You now have users and mail for some users in AD.

Now, create a template file:

<l;lpbody>dn: %FIELD_3%
changetype: modify
replace: userPrincipalName
userPrincipalName: %FIELD_4%
-<l;/lpbody>

If you now run a query to select against the csv and use the -tpl file you will get results in such a way that they can be imported into AD using LDIF. Personally, I have C# (or even powershell ways) to do mass imports into AD.

UPDATE: I finally found the post that showed me how to do this and it was on Scott Lowe's site.

Here is another great example on how to use TPL files.

In short, tpl is very nice since you can write a batch script to call logparser and create the tpl file and then do whatever you want with it such as FTPing it up to a site.

I'll get back to calling this from code tomorrow.