Get count of records actually updated with gliderecord.update()

[Max Nowak]

Hi,

I'm updating a lot of records in a script, and would like to now the accurate number of updates. By "accurate", I mean the number of records that actually changed.

Let's say I have a simple script, like this, where I - for whatever reason - want to set the Impact of all incidents to "3 - Low":

var gr = new GlideRecord('incident');
incident.query();

while(gr.next()) {
  incident.setValue('impact', '3');
  incident.update();
}

I know that gr.getRowCount() gives me the number of records returned from the query, which would be the number of all incidents in this case. What I need is the number of incidents actually changed, so, all Incidents where the Impact field was previously set to something other than "3".

I also know that ServiceNow somehow checks this and doesn't just blindly updates all records, because if I run the above script 5 times, the sys_updated_on and sys_mod_count fields are only updated once (so, only if there actually was a change).

Of course, I could check the fields beforehand and use my own counter variables:

var gr = new GlideRecord('incident');
incident.query();

var updateCount = 0;
var ignoreCount = 0;

while(gr.next()) {
 var impactValue = gr.getValue('impact');
  if(impactValue == '3') {
    ignoreCount++
  } else {
    incident.setValue('impact', '3');
    incident.update();
    updateCount++
  }
}

gs.info('Updated: ' + updateCount + ', ignored: ' + ignoreCount);

I'm wondering if there is a more elegant solution, though.

[Community Alums]

few ways to do that, but I'd use this approach:

var gr = new GlideRecord('incident');
incident.query();

var updateCount = 0;
var ignoreCount = 0;

while(gr.next()) {
 var impactValue = gr.getValue('impact');
  if(impactValue == '3') {
    ignoreCount++
  } else {
    incident.setValue('impact', '3');
    if(incident.update()){ //only if we update the record
    updateCount++;
}
  }
}

gs.info('Updated: ' + updateCount + ', ignored: ' + ignoreCount);

[Jerick I]

Hi Max,

If you can include GlideAggregate in your code, updating the record will be a lot simpler and faster. See below sample.

var updateUser = new GlideAggregate('sys_user');
updateUser.addEncodedQuery("nameLIKEabel");
updateUser.query();

    updateUser.active = true;
    updateUser.updateMultiple();

Regards,

Jeff