Bulk Exporting ServiceNow Data as XML using JavaScript

Recently, I came across a need to export large amounts of information from ServiceNow in XML format - problematically, these records (within kb_knowledge specifically) include their own discrete attachment/s, meaning that a single XML file could be 20 -> 30mb in size.

Understandably, this has some impact on the total file size of the table - I suddenly needed to import a 900mb XML file into ServiceNow.

To avoid needing to do this again, I scoured the internet for some tooling, and came across a few options, but unfortunately none of them suited my needs:

Dave’s ServiceNow Bulk Export Tool looked promising, but I needed something I could run in Production without asking for approvals for an API user.
SN Community Posts asking for assistance resulted in the usage of FTP uploads - useful maybe, but not for my use case.

Ultimately, I decided to resort to good ol' JS to quickly throw together a function I could paste into my browser’s console and run to make things nice and simple.

The resulting function has the following “features”:

Inputs for TableName and ServiceNow Instance
Record Counter to split records evenly by a predetermined amount
Optional custom encoded query so you can export information you care about.
Saving the output as XML directly via the browser.
Free (?) bugs!

Please find the script snippet below - use at your own peril!

/**
 * Batch ServiceNow XML Downloader
 * @param {string} tableName ServiceNow Table Name
 * @param {string} instanceName ServiceNow Instance Name
 * @param {int} recordCount Number of records to include
 * @param {string} queryParam ServiceNow Encoded Query
 */
function bulkDownload(tableName, instanceName, recordCount, queryParam) {

    var urlObj = new URL(`https://${instanceName}.service-now.com/${tableName}_list.do?sysparm_record_count=${recordCount}&XML&sysparm_order_by=sys_id&sysparm_query=${queryParam}`);
    console.log('---')
    console.log(urlObj.toString());

    var link = document.createElement('a');
    var filePath = `${urlObj.toString()}.xml`;
    link.href = filePath;
    link.download = filePath;
    link.click();

    fetch(`${urlObj.toString()}`)
        // Get the Response Body as text
        .then(resp => resp.text())

        // Convert the HTML Body to XML - if it's null, then we don't have to run it
        .then(text => new DOMParser().parseFromString(text, "text/xml"))

        // From our Parsed XML, get the last XML element
        .then(parsedXML => {
            var returnedXMLNodeCount = parsedXML.getElementsByTagName('sys_id').length;
            if (returnedXMLNodeCount == 0) {
                return new Error;
            } else {
                return parsedXML.getElementsByTagName('sys_id')[returnedXMLNodeCount - 1];
            }
        })

        // Now, let's do some logic with it:
        .then(element => {
            var lastElementID = element.innerHTML;
            // First, make sure our search params exist
            if (urlObj.searchParams.get('sysparm_query')) {
                //If the URL contains the last used sys_id, we've already run this and we shouldn't run it again
                if ((urlObj.searchParams.getAll('sysparm_query').findIndex(
                    element => element.includes(`${lastElementID}`)
                )) != -1) {
                    console.log("No More Records to process, ending");
                    return;

                } else if ((urlObj.searchParams.get('sysparm_query').includes('^sys_id>'))) {
                    //If the sysparm_query parameter contains sys_id, then we need to remove it
                    var regex = /(?<=sys_id>)(.*)/;
                    var param = urlObj.searchParams.get('sysparm_query').replace(regex, '');
                    urlObj.searchParams.set("sysparm_query", `${param}${lastElementID}`);
                    bulkDownload(tableName, instanceName, recordCount, urlObj.searchParams.get('sysparm_query'));
                } else {
                    console.log("no sys_id in params");
                    urlObj.searchParams.set('sysparm_query', `${queryParam}^sys_id>${lastElementID}`);
                    bulkDownload(tableName, instanceName, recordCount, urlObj.searchParams.get('sysparm_query'));
                }
            }

        }, err => {
            console.log(err);
            console.log("No more records to show");
        });
}