Hp SiteScope: Dynamic Dates (Url, FileName,...)

Sometimes a monitor will need a dynamic date for it to work correctly.  If the date needs to be dynamic, SiteScope has Dynamic Date Variables.  You can use these in file names, text fields, URLs, POST data, almost everywhere.

SiteScope recognizes a specific set of variables to use in substitute for static date or time values:

Variable	Range of Values
$hour$	0 – 23
$minute$	0 – 59
$month$	1 – 12
$day$	1 – 31
$year$	1000 – 9999
$shortYear$	00 – 99
$weekdayName$	Sun – Sat
$fullWeekdayName$	Sunday – Saturday
$0hour$	00 – 23
$0minute$	00 – 59
$0day$	01 – 31 (two digit day format)
$0month$	01 – 12 (two digit month format)
$monthName$	Jan – Dec (three letter month format in English)
$fullMonthName$	January – December
$ticks$	milliseconds since midnight, January 1, 1970

Looking for a Dynamic Date in a Monitor’s Content Match

Say you have a web page that you want to check a timestamp on, to make sure it is being updated every day.  The content match search expression can be:

/Updated on $0month$\/$0day$\/$shortYear$/

The web page returned by the request could include the string:

Updated on 06/01/19

The content match would be successful if the webpage returned the current date when the monitor was run on June 1st, 2019. The match would fail if the content returned does not contain a string matching the current date.

Dates in the Future or the Past

If you want the time to be before or after the current time, you can add  $offsetMinutes=mmmm$ to the expression.  Simply specify the number of minutes into the future (positive number), or the number of minutes into the past (negative number).

For Example:

$offsetMinutes=20160$      = 20160 minutes, or 336 hours, or 14 days into the future.

$offsetMinutes=-20160$      = 14 days ago.

If the current day is June 1st, 2019, and the search expression is:

/$offsetMinutes=1440$Updated on $0month$\/$0day$\/$shortYear$/

the content string that would match would be one day in the future:

Updated on 06/02/19

You can use it in a URL monitor, File monitor, Log monitor, in almost any field that I’ve been able to find except the User-Generated SOAP XML field in the Web Service monitor.  For some reason, development has decided to not keep things consistent with the Web Service monitor.  That monitor sucks anyway.  Don’t use it.

Using Dynamic Dates in a Log Monitor

Here’s an example of me setting a log monitor to look for a filename that contains the date 24 hours ago.  I want this because I don’t care if the file exists or has log entries.  In this case,  I just want to make sure that yesterday’s file exists and contains entries.

s/\\hostname\/f$\/home\/ABC/$offsetMinutes=-1440$MY_APP_LOG_$0month$-$0day$-$shortYear$.log/

Using Dynamic Dates in a File Monitor

You can do the same with the file monitor.  I might have a monitor set to run at a specific time, after a backup job should have completed.  I can set the monitor to look for a file with today’s date, and if it doesn’t exist I could have it generate an alert:

s/\\hostname\/d$\/backups\/MY_DAILY_BACKUP.$year$$0month$$0day$/

Using Dynamic Dates in a URL Monitor’s URL As in the other examples, you just need to wrap the line in s/Your URL/, and replace your year, month, day, etc. with the correct date variable:

s/http://flightsearch.com/search.asp?SearchDate=$year$-$0month$-$0day$/

or

s/http://flightsearch.com/search.asp?$offsetMinutes=1440$SearchDate=$year$-$0month$-$0day$/

There doesn’t seem to be a way to include multiple offsetMinutes in a single line.  So, dynamic dates will have to be the same.  So, if you have a URL like this, that requires different dates in the future, I don’t know of a way to make them both dynamic and different.

s/http:\/\/flightsearch.com\/search.asp?$offsetMinutes=1440$Arrival=$year$-$0month$-$0day$&Departure=$year$-$0month$-$0day$/

becomes
 http://flightsearch.com/search.asp?Arrival=2015-07-01&Departure=2015-07-01

Using Dynamic Dates in a URL Monitor’s HTTP POST Data

In this example, I’ll show you how to use dynamic dates inside of the HTTP POST data field of a URL Monitor.  This is especially strange and not really documented.  This solution comes from a super helpful HP expert named Kenneth Gonzalez in the HP SiteScope forums.

To add dynamic dates, you’ll need to include the whole line within a Regex operation like this:

s|$offsetMinutes=20160$      "DepartDate": "$0month$/$0day$/$year$ "|

This will send the following line:

“DepartDate”: “07/04/2019”

NOTE: I’ve used pipes here to define the regex in this example, because the web service is using forward slashes to define the date.  I don’t recall if I had problems escaping the forward slashes, or if I was just too lazy to type the extra back slashes to escape them.  It should work either way.

Here’s how it looks in the HTTP Post data:

Custom-Header: Content-Type: application/json
Custom-Header: Method: POST
{
  "Trips": [
    {
      "Destination": "SAT",
      "Origin": "IAH",
s|$offsetMinutes=20160$      "DepartDate": "$0month$/$0day$/$year$ "|
    },
    {
      "Destination": "IAH",
      "Origin": "SAT",
s|$offsetMinutes=43200$      "DepartDate": "$0month$/$0day$/$year$ "|
    }
  ]
}

Ref. carlbrahms