OnServer.py

OnServer - See what feeds your map services.

OnServer shows you the MXD used to create each of the map services on an ArcGIS Server installation, and the data sources that feed them.

OnServer also allows you to pass a search term on the command line, narrowing the returned results.

onserver.py
usage: Find a featureclass, database, mxd, or service in ArcGIS Server
       [-h] [-q] [-qq] [-cs] [-csv] [-md] [name]

positional arguments:
  name                string for which to search (blank returns info on all
                      services)

optional arguments:
  -h, --help          show this help message and exit
  -q, --quiet         only display service names and URLs
  -qq, --veryquiet    only display service URLs, comma delimited
  -cs, --configstore  specify a path path to a configuration store, such as \\server\share\directories\arcgissystem\arcgisinput
  -csv, --tocsv       display output as comma-separated values
  -md, --markdown     display output as Markdown

For search strings inlcuding spaces, enclose the query in double-quotes

For Example:

C:\>onserver.py noticeme (find all map services, MXDs, or data sources / feature classes with noticeme as a substring)

C:\>onserver.py noticeme_layers (get info about any map service(s) named noticeme_layers)

C:\>onserver.py council_nm (find all map services that reference any copy of the council_nm feature class)

C:\>onserver.py noticeme_layers.gdb (find all map services that use anything in a particular GDB)

Use Cases

OnServer has three primary use cases at the City of New Orleans: information, automation, and restoration.

Information

The most common usage of OnServer is to find the data sources that feed a particular map service:

C:\>onserver.py noticeme_layers

NoticeMe_Layers (apps/NoticeMe_Layers)
--------------------------------------
 D:\MXD\NoticeMe_Layers.mxd
 - D:\data\geodatabase\NoticeMe_Layers.gdb
   + council_nm
   + srno_nm

etc.

OnServer gives you a pretty detailed run-down of the data sources and MXD used to create each map service it finds that matches your search term.

Sometimes, though, you want to run the reverse search; which map services use a particular feature class:

C:\>onserver.py council_nm

NoticeMe_Layers (Staging/NoticeMe_Layers)
-----------------------------------------
 D:\MXD\NoticeMe_Layers.mxd
 - D:\data\geodatabase\NoticeMe_Layers.gdb
   + council_nm
   + srno_nm


NoticeMe_Layers (apps/NoticeMe_Layers)
--------------------------------------
 D:\MXD\NoticeMe_Layers.mxd
 - D:\data\geodatabase\NoticeMe_Layers.gdb
   + council_nm
   + srno_nm

etc.

For commonly used feature classes (think parcels or addresses), this can give a pretty long list, so you can use the --quiet option:

C:\>onserver.py --quiet council_nm

NoticeMe_Layers (apps/NoticeMe_Layers)
WhereYat (apps/WhereYat)
NoticeMe_Layers (Staging/NoticeMe_Layers)
WhereYatPresentation (dev/WhereYatPresentation)

to get a brief listing of the map services and the web path to the map services. You can then use repeated calls to OnServer to drill down into those map services and get the information you need.

Piping output to a file

OnServer output can very easily be piped to a file.

Pipe stdout to a text file:

C:\>onserver.py > output.txt

Pipe CSV output to a file:

C:\>onserver.py -csv > output.csv

Create Markdown output and pipe it to a file:

C:\>onserver.py -md > output.md

Automation

The second most common use case is automation. There are occasions where an often-updated file geodatabase needs to be compacted to prevent it from filling the hard drive on the server (most often when you update feature classes very frequently using truncate/append). You can use the --veryquiet option to list just the map service paths (one per line) that match the search term:

C:\>onserver.py --veryquiet NoticeMe_Layers.gdb

dev/WhereYatPresentation
Staging/NoticeMe_Layers
Staging/CEPMap
apps/NoticeMe_Layers
apps/CEPMap
apps/WhereYat

The included stop_services.cmd and start_services.cmd tools (discussed below) use this option. Using those tools, models saved as Python scripts, and some batch file magic, you can automate tasks that would otherwise be onerous to do by hand.

Restoration

Sometimes, it's handy to be able to rebuild a bunch of map services automatically, whether due to upgrade, migration, or other less pleasant occurences.

The full listing of map services, MXDs and data sources generated by OnServer can be easily saved to a file for later use:

C:\>onserver.py > C:\data\map_services.txt

In fact, running this periodically and saving the output was really useful after a nasty server crash. Using the included make_many tools (discussed below) with an archived copy of the OnServer output you can quickly rebuild (most) of your map services automatically.

Extra Tools

Coming Soon: Discussion of make_many, stop_services.cmd, and start_services.cmd.

Requirements

ArcGIS for Server 10.1/10.2/10.3/10.4 (Windows only, currently)
Python 2.7

Issues

Currently only works with the Windows version of ArcGIS Server, as I don't have a Linux install to test against.

chadcooper / OnServer