This iteration highlights the use of additional Python third-party libraries to handle many of the operations we previously performed in a more manual manner. In this instance, we used Peewee and Jinja2 to further automate database management and HTML reporting. These two libraries are popular methods for handling this type of data and are either bundled into or have ports for other Python suites, such as Flask and Django.
In addition, this iteration closely resembles the first to demonstrate the differences in the two methods in a clearer manner. One of the goals of this book is to introduce as many methods for performing a task in Python as possible. The purpose of this chapter is not to create a better iteration, but to showcase different methods to accomplish the same tasks and add new skills to our toolbox. This is the last chapter where we will be creating multiple iterations of a script; the chapters going forward are focused on more expansive singular scripts as we begin to expand on our forensic coding capabilities.
Note that the way in which we execute our script has not changed. We still need to specify a custodian, a path to a database, and the type of mode. You may notice that this script is considerably slower than our previous script. Sometimes, when using automated solutions, our code can suffer due to additional overhead or the inefficient implementation of the module. Here, we've lost some efficiency by moving away from a more bare-bones and manual process. However, this script is more maintainable and does not require the developer to have in-depth knowledge of SQL.
For this iteration, we opted to generate our Bootstrap-based HTML report. What this report lacks in analytical capacity, it gains in portability and simplicity. This is a professional looking page, thanks to Bootstrap, and can be searched for specific files of interest or printed out for those that prefer the paper-and-pen approach:
