Highlight Automated Code Scan (Command Line)
This page details how to automate source code scans by leveraging the Highlight command line and integrating it within your build or CI/CD environments. This will allow you to continuously track and monitor software health and cloud readiness of your projects and applications. For any questions not addressed in this documentation, don’t hesitate to contact our support team.
Before getting started…
What is a Command Line?
For those who are not familiar with this concept, the Highlight command line is a Java binary which can be programmatically run using scripts and/or automated tasks. It replaces the Local Agent user interface using options you can configure in order to automate the code scan and results upload. In other words, you can configure the command line once to automatically scan the source code of a folder multiple times. You can also exclude (for instance) some technologies/folders you don’t want to scan, and upload the results automatically to the SaaS platform on a regular timeline (e.g., every sprint/release).

Please read and accept the license agreement prior to downloading the command line.
How to use the command line
Examples
Find below some examples of options you can reuse for your own code scan configuration.
java -jar HighlightAutomation.jar --workingDir "C:\highlight-myproject" --sourceDir "C:\myproject\src" --skipUpload
java -jar HighlightAutomation.jar --workingDir "/home/user/highlight-myproject/" --sourceDir "/home/user/svn/myproject/src/" --skipUpload
java -jar HighlightAutomation.jar --workingDir "C:\highlight-myproject" --sourceDir "C:\myproject\src" --technologies "Java,Python" --skipUpload
java -jar HighlightAutomation.jar --workingDir "C:\highlight-myproject" --sourceDir "C:\myproject\src" --ignoreDirectories "test,jquery" --skipUpload
java -jar HighlightAutomation.jar --workingDir "C:\highlight-myproject" --sourceDir "C:\myproject\src" --login "john.doe@acme.com" --password "*******" --applicationId 1234 --companyId 5678 --serverUrl "https://rpa.casthighlight.com"
java -jar HighlightAutomation.jar --workingDir "C:\highlight-myproject" --sourceDir "C:\myproject\src" --ignoreFiles ".*foo.*" --skipUpload
java -jar HighlightAutomation.jar --workingDir "C:\highlight-myproject" --sourceDir "C:\myproject\src" --ignoreFiles ".*foo.*\.js" --skipUpload
java -jar HighlightAutomation.jar --workingDir "C:\highlight-myproject" --sourceDir "C:\myproject\src" --ignoreFiles ".*\.vue" --skipUpload
Command Line Options
--help Displays the different options
--printTechnos Print the supported technologies (e.g. Java, Python, COBOL, etc.)
Scan Options
--sourceDir (mandatory) The absolute path to the directory that contains the source code to be scanned by Highlight.
--workingDir (mandatory) This is the absolute path to the Highlight working directory. Within this directory, a Highlight temporary folder ("HLTemporary") will be created and will contain scan result files (CSVs). To make it short, this is the directory where you want to store scan results.
--technologies (optional) Technologies you want to explicitly scan in your sources. Separated by "," and sorted by preferences (See --printTechnos option above).
--ignoreDirectories (optional) Directory name patterns to ignore during the scan (e.g. test folders, .git, etc.). Separated by ",". Source code within directories matching with these patterns will be automatically excluded from the scan.
--ignoreFiles (optional) List of regular expression to ignore file names. Separated by ",". Files matching with these patterns will be automatically excluded from the scan. Example to exclude all files containing "foo" with a .js extension: --ignoreFiles ".*foo.*\.js"
--analyzerDir (optional) Alternate directory for Highlight's analyzer scripts.
--perlInstallDir (optional) Directory of perl installation (default: C:\Program Files\CAST\HighlightAgent\COTS\strawberry-perl-5.12.3.0).
--keywordScan (optional) Path and filename of your KeywordScan XML configuration file (e.g. C:\temp\KeywordScanner_GDPR.xml). Read this post for more information on the feature.
--skipUpload (optional) Will generate CSV results only, no result upload will be performed.
Upload Options
Below are the required options to use when you want to automatically upload scan results to the Highlight platform. Then, the option “–skipUpload” should be removed.
--login (mandatory) Login of an active Highlight user.
--password (mandatory) Password for the login indicated above.
--basicAuth Alternatively to login/password, you can use this option to pass your credentials encoded in base64
--companyId (mandatory) Identifyer for the company (can be retrieved from the Highlight portal, it is the ID displayed in the url when clicking on the top-level domain in "MANAGE PORTFOLIO > MANAGE APPLICATIONS" from the menu).
--applicationId (mandatory) Identifyer for the application (can be retried from the Highlight portal, it is the ID displayed in the url when editing an application in "MANAGE PORTFOLIO > MANAGE APPLICATIONS").
--serverUrl (mandatory) The Highlight server instance where the results has to be uploaded (user credentials have to work on this server). E.g. 'https://rpa.casthighlight.com'
--snapshotDatetime (optional) Time (epoch) to use for uploaded application snapshot.
--snapshotLabel (optional) The application snapshot label you want to display on the application result page on the portal (e.g. release version, build number, etc.).
Log files
The log file (HLAutomation.log) is produced after the command line is run and is stored in the working directory (–workingDir) that has been set in the options.
Requirements
Prior using the command line, it is preferable to install the Highlight Local Agent on your machine, in order to embed the required Perl binaries. Alternatively, you can install the required Perl distribution (Strawberry) if you don’t want to install the Local Agent. The Local Agent can be downloaded from your Highlight user account, in the APPLICATION SCANS page.
For Linux
The following components must be installed on your machine: Perl 5 (tested on Strawberry 5.12.3.0), libjson-perl, libxml-libxml-perl
$>perl -v
on debian/ubuntu systems
$>dpkg –get-selections libxml-libxml-perl libjson-perl
Java 8
$>java -version
For MacOS
For MacOS users, using our Docker image is recommended to run the command line as a container.
$>perl -v
$>cpan install XML::LibXML
$>cpan install JSON