SARIF Tools

A set of command line tools and Python library for working with SARIF files.

Read more about the SARIF format here: https://sarifweb.azurewebsites.net/

Installation

Prerequisites

You need Python 3.8 or later installed. Get it from python.org. This document assumes that the python command runs that version.

Installing on Windows

Open an Admin Command Prompt (Start > Command Prompt > Run as Administrator) and type:

pip install sarif-tools

Installing on Linux or Mac

sudo pip install sarif-tools

Testing the installation

After installing using pip, you should then be able to run:

sarif --version

Troubleshooting installation

This section has suggestions in case the sarif command is not available after installation.

A launcher called sarif or sarif.exe is created in the Python installation's Scripts directory. The Scripts directory needs to be in the PATH environment variable for you to be able to type sarif at the command prompt; this is most likely the case if pip is run as a super-user when installing (e.g. Administrator Command Prompt on Windows, or using sudo on Linux).

If the Scripts directory is not in the PATH, then you need to type python -m sarif instead of sarif to run the tool.

Confusion can arise when the python and pip commands on the PATH are from different installations, or the python installation on the super-user's PATH is different from the python command on the normal user's path. On Windows, you can use where python and where pip in normal CMD and Admin CMD to see which installations are in use; on Linux, it's which python and which pip with and without sudo.

Command Line Usage

usage: sarif [-h] [--version] [--debug] [--check {error,warning,note}] {blame,copy,csv,diff,html,info,ls,summary,trend,usage,word} ...

Process sets of SARIF files

positional arguments:
  {blame,copy,csv,diff,html,info,ls,summary,trend,usage,word}
                        command

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version, -v         show program's version number and exit
  --debug               Print information useful for debugging
  --check {error,warning,note}, -x {error,warning,note}
                        Exit with error code if there are any issues of the specified level (or for diff, an increase in issues at that level).

commands:
blame    Enhance SARIF file with information from `git blame`
copy     Write a new SARIF file containing optionally-filtered data from other SARIF file(s)
csv      Write a CSV file listing the issues from the SARIF files(s) specified
diff     Find the difference between two [sets of] SARIF files
html     Write an HTML representation of SARIF file(s) for viewing in a web browser
info     Print information about SARIF file(s) structure
ls       List all SARIF files in the directories specified
summary  Write a text summary with the counts of issues from the SARIF files(s) specified
trend    Write a CSV file with time series data from SARIF files with "yyyymmddThhmmssZ" timestamps in their filenames
usage    (Command optional) - print usage and exit
word     Produce MS Word .docx summaries of the SARIF files specified
Run `sarif <COMMAND> --help` for command-specific help.

Commands

The commands are illustrated below assuming input files in the following locations:

• C:\temp\sarif_files = a directory of SARIF files with arbitrary filenames.
• C:\temp\sarif_with_date = a directory of SARIF files with filenames including timestamps e.g. C:\temp\sarif_with_date\myapp_devskim_output_20211001T012000Z.sarif.
• C:\temp\old_sarif_files = a directory of SARIF files with arbitrary filenames from an older build.
• C:\code\my_source_repo = checkout directory of source code files from which SARIF results were obtained.

blame

usage: sarif blame [-h] [--output PATH] [--code PATH] [file_or_dir [file_or_dir ...]]

Enhance SARIF file with information from `git blame`

positional arguments:
  file_or_dir           A SARIF file or a directory containing SARIF files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output PATH, -o PATH
                        Output file or directory
  --code PATH, -c PATH  Path to git repository; if not specified, the current working directory is used

Augment SARIF files with git blame information, and write the augmented files to a specified location.

sarif blame -o "C:\temp\sarif_files_with_blame_info" -c "C:\code\my_source_repo" "C:\temp\sarif_files"

If the current working directory is the git repository, the -c argument can be omitted.

See Blame filtering below for the format of the blame information that gets added to the SARIF files.

copy

usage: sarif copy [-h] [--output FILE] [--blame-filter FILE] [--timestamp] [file_or_dir [file_or_dir ...]]

Write a new SARIF file containing optionally-filtered data from other SARIF file(s)

positional arguments:
  file_or_dir           A SARIF file or a directory containing SARIF files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output FILE, -o FILE
                        Output file
  --blame-filter FILE, -b FILE
                        Specify the blame filter file to apply. See README for format.
  --timestamp, -t       Append current timestamp to output filename in the "yyyymmddThhmmssZ" format used by the `sarif trend` command

Write a new SARIF file containing optionally-filtered data from an existing SARIF file or multiple SARIF files. The resulting file contains each run from the original SARIF files back-to-back. The results can be filtered (see Blame filtering below), in which case only those results from the original SARIF files that meet the filter are included; the output file contains no information about the excluded records. If a run in the original file was empty, or all its results are filtered out, the empty run is still included.

If no output filename is provided, a file called out.sarif in the current directory is written. If the output file already exists and is also in the input file list, it is not included in the inputs, to avoid duplication of results. The output file is overwritten without warning.

The file_or_dir specifier can include wildcards e.g. c:\temp\**\devskim*.sarif (i.e. a "glob"). This works for all commands, but it is particularly useful for copy.

One use for this is to combine a set of SARIF files from multiple static analysis tools run during a build process into a single file that can be more easily stored and processed as a build asset.

csv

usage: sarif csv [-h] [--output PATH] [--blame-filter FILE] [--autotrim] [--trim PREFIX] [file_or_dir [file_or_dir ...]]

Write a CSV file listing the issues from the SARIF files(s) specified

positional arguments:
  file_or_dir           A SARIF file or a directory containing SARIF files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output PATH, -o PATH
                        Output file or directory
  --blame-filter FILE, -b FILE
                        Specify the blame filter file to apply. See README for format.
  --autotrim, -a        Strip off the common prefix of paths in the CSV output
  --trim PREFIX         Prefix to strip from issue paths, e.g. the checkout directory on the build agent

Write out a simple tabular list of issues from [a set of] SARIF files. This can then be analysed, e.g. via Pivot Tables in Excel.

Use the --trim option to strip specific prefixes from the paths, to make the CSV less verbose. Alternatively, use --autotrim to strip off the longest common prefix.

Generate a CSV summary of a single SARIF file with common file path prefix suppressed:

sarif csv "C:\temp\sarif_files\devskim_myapp.sarif"

Generate a CSV summary of a directory of SARIF files with path prefix C:\code\my_source_repo suppressed:

sarif csv --trim c:\code\my_source_repo "C:\temp\sarif_files"

See Blame filtering below for how to use the --blame-filter option.

diff

usage: sarif diff [-h] [--output FILE] [--blame-filter FILE] old_file_or_dir new_file_or_dir

Find the difference between two [sets of] SARIF files

positional arguments:
  old_file_or_dir       An old SARIF file or a directory containing the old SARIF files
  new_file_or_dir       A new SARIF file or a directory containing the new SARIF files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output FILE, -o FILE
                        Output file
  --blame-filter FILE, -b FILE
                        Specify the blame filter file to apply. See README for format.

Print the difference between two [sets of] SARIF files.

Difference between the issues in two SARIF files:

sarif diff "C:\temp\old_sarif_files\devskim_myapp.sarif" "C:\temp\sarif_files\devskim_myapp.sarif"

Difference between the issues in two directories of SARIF files:

sarif diff "C:\temp\old_sarif_files" "C:\temp\sarif_files"

Write output to JSON file instead of printing to stdout:

sarif diff -o mydiff.json "C:\temp\old_sarif_files\devskim_myapp.sarif" "C:\temp\sarif_files\devskim_myapp.sarif"

See Blame filtering below for how to use the --blame-filter option.

html

usage: sarif html [-h] [--output PATH] [--blame-filter FILE] [--no-autotrim] [--image IMAGE] [--trim PREFIX] [file_or_dir [file_or_dir ...]]

Write an HTML representation of SARIF file(s) for viewing in a web browser

positional arguments:
  file_or_dir           A SARIF file or a directory containing SARIF files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output PATH, -o PATH
                        Output file or directory
  --blame-filter FILE, -b FILE
                        Specify the blame filter file to apply. See README for format.
  --no-autotrim, -n     Do not strip off the common prefix of paths in the output document
  --image IMAGE         Image to include at top of file - SARIF logo by default
  --trim PREFIX         Prefix to strip from issue paths, e.g. the checkout directory on the build agent

Create an HTML file summarising SARIF results.

sarif html -o summary.html "C:\temp\sarif_files"

Use the --trim option to strip specific prefixes from the paths, to make the generated HTML page less verbose. The longest common prefix of the paths will be trimmed unless --no-autotrim is specified.

Use the --image option to provide a header image for the top of the HTML page. The image is embedded into the HTML, so the HTML document remains a portable standalone file.

See Blame filtering below for how to use the --blame-filter option.

info

usage: sarif info [-h] [--output FILE] [file_or_dir [file_or_dir ...]]

Print information about SARIF file(s) structure

positional arguments:
  file_or_dir           A SARIF file or a directory containing SARIF files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output FILE, -o FILE
                        Output file

Print information about the structure of a SARIF file or multiple files. This is about the JSON structure rather than any meaning of the results produced by the tool. The summary includes the full path of the file, its size and modified date, the number of runs, and for each run, the tool that generated the run, the number of results, and the entries in the results' property bags.

c:\temp\sarif_files\ios_devskim_output.sarif
  1256241 bytes (1.2 MiB)
  modified: 2021-10-13 21:50:01.251544, accessed: 2022-01-09 18:23:00.060573, ctime: 2021-10-13 20:49:00
  1 run
    Tool: devskim
    1323 results
    All results have properties: tags, DevSkimSeverity

ls

usage: sarif ls [-h] [--output FILE] [file_or_dir [file_or_dir ...]]

List all SARIF files in the directories specified

positional arguments:
  file_or_dir           A SARIF file or a directory containing SARIF files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output FILE, -o FILE
                        Output file

List SARIF files in one or more directories.

sarif ls "C:\temp\sarif_files" "C:\temp\sarif_with_date"

summary

usage: sarif ls [-h] [--output FILE] [file_or_dir [file_or_dir ...]]

List all SARIF files in the directories specified

positional arguments:
  file_or_dir           A SARIF file or a directory containing SARIF files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output FILE, -o FILE
                        Output file

Print a summary of the issues in one or more SARIF file(s), grouped by severity and then ordered by number of occurrences.

When directories are provided as input and output, a summary is written for each input file, along with another file containing the totals.

sarif summary -o summaries "C:\temp\sarif_files"

When no output directory or file is specified, the overall summary is printed to the standard output.

sarif summary "C:\temp\sarif_files\devskim_myapp.sarif"

See Blame filtering below for how to use the --blame-filter option.

trend

usage: sarif trend [-h] [--output FILE] [--blame-filter FILE] [--dateformat {dmy,mdy,ymd}] [file_or_dir [file_or_dir ...]]

Write a CSV file with time series data from SARIF files with "yyyymmddThhmmssZ" timestamps in their filenames

positional arguments:
  file_or_dir           A SARIF file or a directory containing SARIF files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output FILE, -o FILE
                        Output file
  --blame-filter FILE, -b FILE
                        Specify the blame filter file to apply. See README for format.
  --dateformat {dmy,mdy,ymd}, -f {dmy,mdy,ymd}
                        Date component order to use in output CSV. Default is `dmy`

Generate a CSV showing a timeline of issues from a set of SARIF files in a directory. The SARIF file names must contain a timestamp in the specific format yyyymmddThhhmmss e.g. 20211012T110000Z.

The CSV can be loaded in Microsoft Excel for graphing and trend analysis.

sarif trend -o timeline.csv "C:\temp\sarif_with_date" --dateformat dmy

See Blame filtering below for how to use the --blame-filter option.

usage

usage: sarif usage [-h] [--output FILE]

(Command optional) - print usage and exit

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output FILE, -o FILE
                        Output file

Print usage and exit.

word

usage: sarif word [-h] [--output PATH] [--blame-filter FILE] [--no-autotrim] [--image IMAGE] [--trim PREFIX] [file_or_dir [file_or_dir ...]]

Produce MS Word .docx summaries of the SARIF files specified

positional arguments:
  file_or_dir           A SARIF file or a directory containing SARIF files

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --output PATH, -o PATH
                        Output file or directory
  --blame-filter FILE, -b FILE
                        Specify the blame filter file to apply. See README for format.
  --no-autotrim, -n     Do not strip off the common prefix of paths in the output document
  --image IMAGE         Image to include at top of file - SARIF logo by default
  --trim PREFIX         Prefix to strip from issue paths, e.g. the checkout directory on the build agent

Create Word documents representing a SARIF file or multiple SARIF files.

If directories are provided for the -o option and the input, then a Word document is produced for each individual SARIF file and for the full set of SARIF files. Otherwise, a single Word document is created.

Create a Word document for each SARIF file and one for all of them together, in the reports directory (created if non-existent):

sarif word -o reports "C:\temp\sarif_files"

Create a Word document for a single SARIF file:

sarif word -o "reports\devskim_myapp.docx" "C:\temp\sarif_files\devskim_myapp.sarif"

Use the --trim option to strip specific prefixes from the paths, to make the generated documents less verbose. The longest common prefix of the paths will be trimmed unless --no-autotrim is specified.

Use the --image option to provide a header image for the top of the Word document.

See Blame filtering below for how to use the --blame-filter option.

Blame filtering

Use the sarif blame command to augment a SARIF file or multiple SARIF files with blame information.

Blame information is added to the property bag of each result object for which it was successfully obtained. The keys and values used are as in the git blame porcelain format. E.g.:

{
  "ruleId": "SM00702",
  ...
  "properties": {
    "blame": {
      "author": "aperson",
      "author-mail": "<[email protected]>",
      "author-time": "1350899798",
      "author-tz": "+0000",
      "committer": "aperson",
      "committer-mail": "<[email protected]>",
      "committer-time": "1350899798",
      "committer-tz": "+0000",
      "summary": "blah blah commit comment blah",
      "boundary": true,
      "filename": "src/net/myproject/mypackage/MyClass.java"
    }
  }
}

Note that the bare boundary key is given the automatic value true.

This blame data can then be used for filtering and summarising via the --blame-filter option available for various commands. This option requires a path to a filter-list file, containing a list of patterns and substrings to match against the blame information author email. The format of a filter-list file is as follows:

# Lines beginning with # are interpreted as comments and ignored.
# A line beginning with "description: " is interpreted as an optional description for the filter.  If no title is specified, the filter file name is used.
description: Example filter from README.md
# Lines beginning with "+: " are interpreted as inclusion substrings.  E.g. the following line includes issues whose author-mail field contains "@microsoft.com".
+: @microsoft.com
# The "+: " can be omitted.
@microsoft.com
# Instead of a substring, a regular expression can be used, enclosed in "/" characters.  Issues whose author-mail field includes a string matching the regular expression are included.  Use ^ and $ to match the whole author-mail field.
+: /^<myname.*\.com>$/
# Again, the "+: " can be omitted for a regular expression include pattern.
/^<myname.*\.com>$/
# Lines beginning with "-: " are interpreted as exclusion substrings.  E.g. the following line excludes issues whose author-mail field contains "[email protected]".
-: [email protected]
# Instead of a substring, a regular expression can be used, enclosed in "/" characters.  Issues whose author-mail field includes a string matching the regular expression are excluded.  Use ^ and $ to match the whole author-mail field.  E.g. the following pattern excludes all issues whose author-mail field contains a GUID.
-: /[0-9A-F]{8}[-][0-9A-F]{4}[-][0-9A-F]{4}[-][0-9A-F]{4}[-][0-9A-F]{12}/

Here's an example of a filter-file that includes issues on lines changed by an @microsoft.com email address or a myname.SOMETHING.com email address, but not if those email addresses end in [email protected] or contain a GUID. It's the same as the above example, with comments stripped out.

description: Example filter from README.md
+: @microsoft.com
+: /^<myname.*\.com>$/
-: [email protected]
-: /[0-9A-F]{8}[-][0-9A-F]{4}[-][0-9A-F]{4}[-][0-9A-F]{4}[-][0-9A-F]{12}/

All matching is case insensitive, because email addresses are. Whitespace at the start and end of lines is ignored, which also means that line ending characters don't matter. The blame filter file must be UTF-8 encoded (including plain ASCII7). It can have a byte order mark or not.

If there are no inclusion patterns, all issues are included except for those matching the exclusion patterns. If there are inclusion patterns, only issues matching the inclusion patterns are included. If an issue matches one or more inclusion patterns and also at least one exclusion pattern, it is excluded.

Sometimes, there may be issues in the SARIF file to which the filter cannot be applied, because blame information is not available. This can be for two reasons: either there is no blame information recorded for the file in which the issue occurred, or the issue location lacks a line number (or specifies line number 1 as a placeholder) so that blame information cannot be correlated to the issue. These issues are included by default. To identify which issues these are, create a filter file that excludes everything to which the filter can be applied:

description: Exclude everything filterable
-: /.*/

Then run a sarif command using this filter file as the --blame-filter to see the default-included issues.

Usage as a Python library

Although not its primary purpose, you can use sarif-tools from a Python script or module to load and summarise SARIF results.

Basic usage pattern

After installation, use sarif.loader to load a SARIF file or files, and then use the operations on the returned SarifFile or SarifFileSet objects to explore the data.

from sarif import loader

sarif_data = loader.load_sarif_file(path_to_sarif_file)
issue_count_by_severity = sarif_data.get_result_count_by_severity()
error_histogram = sarif_data.get_issue_code_histogram("error")

Result access API

The three classes defined in the sarif_files module, SarifFileSet, SarifFile and SarifRun, provide similar APIs, which allows SARIF results to be handled similarly at multiple levels of aggregation. This section briefly describes some of the key APIs at the three levels of aggregation.

get_distinct_tool_names()

Returns a list of distinct tool names in a SarifFile or for all files in a SarifFileSet. A SarifRun has a single tool name so the equivalent method is get_tool_name().

get_results()

Return the list of SARIF results. These are objects as defined in the SARIF standard section 3.27.

get_records()

Return the list of SARIF results as simplified, flattened record dicts. Each record has the attributes defined in sarif_file.RECORD_ATTRIBUTES.

• "Tool" - the tool name for the run containing the result.
• "Severity" - the SARIF severity for the record. One of error, warning (the default if the record doesn't specify) or note.
• "Code" - the issue code from the result.
• "Location" - the location of the issue, typically the file containing the issue. Format varies by tool.
• "Line" - the line number in the file where the issue occurs. Value is a string. This defaults to "1" if the tool failed to identify the line.

get_records_grouped_by_severity()

As per get_records(), but the result is a dict from SARIF severity level (error, warning and note) to the list of records of that severity level.

get_result_count(), get_result_count_by_severity()

Get the total number of SARIF results. get_result_count_by_severity() returns a dict from SARIF severity level (error, warning and note) to the integer number of results of that severity.

get_issue_code_histogram(severity)

For the given severity, get histogram in the form of a list of pairs. The first item in each pair is the issue code, the second item is the number of matching records, and the list is sorted in decreasing order of frequency (the same as the sarif summary command output).

Disaggregation and filename access

These fields and methods allow access to the underlying information about the SARIF files.

• SarifFileSet.subdirs - a list of SarifFileSet objects corresponding to the subdirectories of the directory from which the SarifFileSet was created.
• SarifFileSet.files - a list of SarifFile objects corresponding to the SARIF files contained in the directory from which the SarifFileSet was created.
• SarifFile.get_abs_file_path() - get the absolute path to the SARIF file.
• SarifFile.get_file_name() - get the name of the SARIF file.
• SarifFile.get_file_name_without_extension() - get the name of the SARIF file without its extension. Useful for constructing derived filenames.
• SarifFile.get_filename_timestamp() - extract the timestamp from the filename of a SARIF file, and return it as a string. The timestamp must be in the format specified in the sarif trend command.
• SarifFile.runs - a list of SarifRun objects contained in the SARIF file. Most SARIF files only contain a single run, but it is possible to aggregate runs from multiple tools into a single SARIF file.

Path shortening API

Call init_path_prefix_stripping(autotrim, path_prefixes) on a SarifFileSet, SarifFile or SarifRun object to set up path filtering, either automatically removing the longest common prefix (autotrim=True) or removing specific prefixes (autotrim=False and a list of strings in path_prefixes).

Blame filtering API

Call init_blame_filter(filter_description, include_substrings, include_regexes, exclude_substrings, exclude_regexes) on a SarifFileSet, SarifFile or SarifRun object to set up blame filtering. filter_description is a string and the other parameters are lists of strings (with no / characters around the regular expressions). They correspond in an obvious way to the filter file contents described in Blame filtering above.

Call get_filter_stats() to retrieve the filter stats after reading the results or records from sarif files. It returns None if there is no filter, or otherwise a sarif_file.FilterStats object with integer fields filtered_in_result_count, filtered_out_result_count, missing_blame_count and unconvincing_line_number_count. Call to_string() on the FilterStats object for a readable representation of these statistics, which also includes the filter file name or description (filter_description field).

Suggested usage in CI pipelines

Using the --check option in combination with the summary command causes sarif-tools to exit with a nonzero exit code if there are any issues of the specified level, or higher. This can be useful to fail a continuous integration (CI) pipeline in the case of SAST violation.

The SARIF issue levels are error, warning and note. These are all valid options for the --check option.

E.g. to fail if there are any errors or warnings:

sarif --check warning summary c:\temp\sarif_files

The diff command can check for any increase in issues of the specified level or above, relative to a previous or baseline build.

E.g. to fail if there are any new issue codes at error level:

sarif --check error diff c:\temp\old_sarif_files c:\temp\sarif_files

You can also use sarif-tools to filter and consolidate the output from multiple tools. E.g.

# First run your static analysis tools, configured to write SARIF output.  How to do that depends
# the tool.

# Now run the blame command to augment the output with blame information.
sarif blame -o with_blame/myapp_mytool_with_blame.sarif myapp_mytool.sarif

# Now combine all tools' output into a single file
sarif copy --timestamp -o artifacts/myapp_alltools_with_blame.sarif

Download the file myapp_alltools_with_blame_TIMESTAMP.sarif that is generated. Then later you can filter the results using the --blame-filter argument, or generate graph of code quality over time using sarif trend.

Credits

sarif-tools was originally developed during the Microsoft Global Hackathon 2021 by Simon Abykov, Nick Brabbs, Anthony Hayward, Sivaji Kondapalli, Matt Parkes and Kathryn Pentland.