healthchecks/README.md

# healthchecks

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![Screenshot of Welcome page](/stuff/screenshots/welcome.png?raw=true "Welcome Page")

![Screenshot of My Checks page](/stuff/screenshots/my_checks.png?raw=true "My Checks Page")

![Screenshot of Period/Grace dialog](/stuff/screenshots/period_grace.png?raw=true "Period/Grace Dialog")

![Screenshot of Channels page](/stuff/screenshots/channels.png?raw=true "Channels Page")

healthchecks is a watchdog for your cron jobs. It's a web server that listens for pings from your cron jobs, plus a web interface.

It is live here: [http://healthchecks.io/](http://healthchecks.io/)

The building blocks are:

* Python 2 or Python 3
* Django 1.9
* PostgreSQL or MySQL

## Setting Up for Development

These are instructions for setting up HealthChecks Django app
in development environment.

* prepare directory for project code and virtualenv:

        $ mkdir -p ~/webapps
        $ cd ~/webapps

* prepare virtual environment
  (with virtualenv you get pip, we'll use it soon to install requirements):

        $ virtualenv --python=python3 hc-venv
        $ source hc-venv/bin/activate

* check out project code:

        $ git clone https://github.com/healthchecks/healthchecks.git

* install requirements (Django, ...) into virtualenv:

        $ pip install -r healthchecks/requirements.txt

* make sure PostgreSQL server is installed and running, create
  database "hc":

        $ psql --user postgres
        postgres=# create database hc;

* create database tables, triggers, superuser:

        $ cd ~/webapps/healthchecks
        $ ./manage.py migrate
        $ ./manage.py ensuretriggers
        $ ./manage.py createsuperuser

* run development server:

        $ ./manage.py runserver

The site should now be running at `http://localhost:8080`
To log into Django administration site as a super user,
visit `http://localhost:8080/admin`

## Database Configuration

Database configuration is stored in `hc/settings.py` and can be overriden
in `hc/local_settings.py`. The default database engine is SQLite. To use
PostgreSQL, create `hc/local_settings.py` if it does not exist, and put the
following in it, changing it as neccessary:

    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE':   'django.db.backends.postgresql',
            'NAME':     'your-database-name-here',
            'USER':     'your-database-user-here',
            'PASSWORD': 'your-database-password-here',
            'TEST': {'CHARSET': 'UTF8'}
        }
    }

For MySQL:

    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE':   'django.db.backends.mysql',
            'NAME':     'your-database-name-here',
            'USER':     'your-database-user-here',
            'PASSWORD': 'your-database-password-here',
            'TEST': {'CHARSET': 'UTF8'}
        }
    }

You can also use `hc/local_settings.py` to read database
configuration from environment variables like so:

    import os

    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE':   os.env['DB_ENGINE'],
            'NAME':     os.env['DB_NAME'],
            'USER':     os.env['DB_USER'],
            'PASSWORD': os.env['DB_PASSWORD'],
            'TEST': {'CHARSET': 'UTF8'}
        }
    }



## Sending Emails

healthchecks must be able to send email messages, so it can send out login
links and alerts to users. You will likely need to tweak email configuration
before emails will work. healthchecks uses
[djmail](http://bameda.github.io/djmail/) for sending emails asynchronously.
Djmail is a BSD Licensed, simple and nonobstructive django email middleware.
It can be configured to use any regular Django email backend behind the
scenes. For example, the healthchecks.io site uses
[django-ses-backend](https://github.com/piotrbulinski/django-ses-backend/)
and the email configuration in `hc/local_settings.py` looks as follows:

    DJMAIL_REAL_BACKEND = 'django_ses_backend.SESBackend'
    AWS_SES_ACCESS_KEY_ID = "put-access-key-here"
    AWS_SES_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = "put-secret-access-key-here"
    AWS_SES_REGION_NAME = 'us-east-1'
    AWS_SES_REGION_ENDPOINT = 'email.us-east-1.amazonaws.com'

## Sending Status Notifications

healtchecks comes with a `sendalerts` management command, which continuously
polls database for any checks changing state, and sends out notifications as
needed. Within an activated virtualenv, you can manually run
the `sendalerts` command like so:

    $ ./manage.py sendalerts

In a production setup, you will want to run this command from a process
manager like [supervisor](http://supervisord.org/) or systemd.

## Database Cleanup

With time and use the healthchecks database will grow in size. You may
decide to prune old data: inactive user accounts, old checks not assigned
to users, records of outgoing email messages and records of received pings.
There are separate Django management commands for each task:

* Remove old records from `api_ping` table. For each check, keep 100 most
  recent pings:

    ````
    $ ./manage.py prunepings
    ````

* Remove checks older than 2 hours that are not assigned to users. Such
  checks are by-products of random visitors and robots loading the welcome
  page and never setting up an account:

    ```
    $ ./manage.py prunechecks
    ```

* Remove records of sent email messages older than 7 days.

    ````
    $ ./manage.py pruneemails
    ````

* Remove user accounts that match either of these conditions:
 * Account was created more than a month ago, and user has never logged in.
   These can happen when user enters invalid email address when signing up.
 * Last login was more than a month ago, and the account has no checks.
   Assume the user doesn't intend to use the account any more and would
   probably *want* it removed.

    ```
    $ ./manage.py pruneusers
    ```    

When you first try these commands on your data, it is a good idea to 
test them on a copy of your database, not on the live database right away. 
In a production setup, you should also have regular, automated database 
backups set up.

## Integrations

### Pushover

To enable Pushover integration, you will need to:

* register a new application on https://pushover.net/apps/build
* enable subscriptions in your application and make sure to enable the URL
  subscription type
* add the application token and subscription URL to `hc/local_settings.py`, as
  `PUSHOVER_API_TOKEN` and `PUSHOVER_SUBSCRIPTION_URL`