healthchecks/templates/docs/http_api.md

Pinging API

With the Pinging API, you can signal success, start, and failure events from your systems.

General Notes

All ping endpoints support:

• HTTP and HTTPS
• HTTP 1.0, HTTP 1.1 and HTTP 2
• IPv4 and IPv6
• HEAD, GET, and POST requests methods. The HTTP POST requests can optionally include diagnostic information in the request body. If the request body looks like a UTF-8 string, SITE_NAME stores the request body (limited to the first 10KB for each received ping).

Successful responses will have the "200 OK" HTTP response status code and a short "OK" string in the response body.

UUIDs and Slugs

Each Pinging API request needs to uniquely identify a check. SITE_NAME supports two ways of identifying a check: by check's UUID, or by a combination of project's Ping Key and check's slug.

Check's UUID is automatically assigned when the check is created. It is immutable. You cannot replace the automatically assigned UUID with a manually chosen one. When you delete a check, you also lose its UUID and cannot get it back.

You can look up UUIDs of your checks in web UI or via Management API calls.

Check's slug is derived from check's name using Django's slugify function. It applies the following transformations:

• Convert to ASCII.
• Convert to lowercase.
• Remove characters that aren't alphanumerics, underscores, hyphens, or whitespace.
• Replace any whitespace or repeated hyphens with single hyphens.
• Remove leading and trailing whitespace, hyphens, and underscores.

For example, if check's name is "Database Backup", its slug is database-backup.

Check's slug can change. SITE_NAME updates check's slug whenever its name changes.

Check's slug is not guaranteed to be unique. If multiple checks in the project have the same name, they also have the same slug. If you make a Pinging API request using a non-unique slug, SITE_NAME will return the "409 Conflict" HTTP status code and ignore the request.

Endpoints

Endpoint Name	Endpoint Address
Success (UUID)	PING_ENDPOINT<uuid>
Start (UUID)	PING_ENDPOINT<uuid>/start
Failure (UUID)	PING_ENDPOINT<uuid>/fail
Report script's exit status (UUID)	PING_ENDPOINT<uuid>/<exit-status>
Success (slug)	PING_ENDPOINT<ping-key>/<slug>
Start (slug)	PING_ENDPOINT<ping-key>/<slug>/start
Failure (slug)	PING_ENDPOINT<ping-key>/<slug>/fail
Report script's exit status (slug)	PING_ENDPOINT<ping-key>/<slug>/<exit-status>

Send a "success" Signal Using UUID {: #success-uuid .rule }

HEAD|GET|POST PING_ENDPOINT<uuid>

Signals to SITE_NAME that the job has completed successfully (or, a continuously running process is still running and healthy).

SITE_NAME identifies the check by the UUID value included in the URL.

Response Codes

200 OK

The request succeeded.

404 not found

Could not find a check with the specified UUID.

Example

GET /5bf66975-d4c7-4bf5-bcc8-b8d8a82ea278 HTTP/1.0
Host: hc-ping.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 09:58:23 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 2
Connection: close
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

OK

Send a "start" Signal Using UUID {: #start-uuid .rule }

HEAD|GET|POST PING_ENDPOINT<uuid>/start

Sends a "job has started!" message to SITE_NAME. Sending a "start" signal is optional, but it enables a few extra features:

• SITE_NAME will measure and display job execution times
• SITE_NAME will detect if the job runs longer than its configured grace time

SITE_NAME identifies the check by the UUID value included in the URL.

Response Codes

200 OK

The request succeeded.

404 not found

Could not find a check with the specified UUID.

Example

GET /5bf66975-d4c7-4bf5-bcc8-b8d8a82ea278/start HTTP/1.0
Host: hc-ping.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 09:58:23 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 2
Connection: close
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

OK

Send a "failure" Signal Using UUID {: #fail-uuid .rule }

HEAD|GET|POST PING_ENDPOINT<uuid>/fail

Signals to SITE_NAME that the job has failed. Actively signaling a failure minimizes the delay from your monitored service failing to you receiving an alert.

SITE_NAME identifies the check by the UUID value included in the URL.

Response Codes

200 OK

The request succeeded.

404 not found

Could not find a check with the specified UUID.

Example

GET /5bf66975-d4c7-4bf5-bcc8-b8d8a82ea278/fail HTTP/1.0
Host: hc-ping.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 09:58:23 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 2
Connection: close
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

OK

Report Script's Exit Status (Using UUID) {: #exitcode-uuid .rule }

HEAD|GET|POST PING_ENDPOINT<uuid>/<exit-status>

Sends a success or failure signal depending on the exit status included in the URL. The exit status is a 0-255 integer. SITE_NAME interprets 0 as success and all other values as failure.

SITE_NAME identifies the check by the UUID value included in the URL.

Response Codes

200 OK

The request succeeded.

400 invalid url format

The URL does not match the expected format.

404 not found

Could not find a check with the specified UUID.

Example

GET /5bf66975-d4c7-4bf5-bcc8-b8d8a82ea278/1 HTTP/1.0
Host: hc-ping.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 09:58:23 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 2
Connection: close
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

OK

Send a "success" Signal (Using Slug) {: #success-slug .rule }

HEAD|GET|POST PING_ENDPOINT<ping-key>/<slug>

Signals to SITE_NAME that the job has completed successfully (or, a continuously running process is still running and healthy).

SITE_NAME identifies the check by project's ping key and check's slug included in the URL.

Response Codes

200 OK

The request succeeded.

404 not found

Could not find a check with the specified ping key and slug combination.

409 ambiguous slug

Ambiguous, the slug matched multiple checks.

Example

GET /fqOOd6-F4MMNuCEnzTU01w/database-backup HTTP/1.0
Host: hc-ping.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 09:58:23 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 2
Connection: close
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

OK

Send a "start" Signal (Using Slug) {: #start-slug .rule }

HEAD|GET|POST PING_ENDPOINT<ping-key>/<slug>/start

Sends a "job has started!" message to SITE_NAME. Sending a "start" signal is optional, but it enables a few extra features:

• SITE_NAME will measure and display job execution times
• SITE_NAME will detect if the job runs longer than its configured grace time

SITE_NAME identifies the check by project's ping key and check's slug included in the URL.

Response Codes

200 OK

The request succeeded.

404 not found

Could not find a check with the specified ping key and slug combination.

409 ambiguous slug

Ambiguous, the slug matched multiple checks.

Example

GET /fqOOd6-F4MMNuCEnzTU01w/database-backup/start HTTP/1.0
Host: hc-ping.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 09:58:23 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 2
Connection: close
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

OK

Send a "failure" Signal (Using slug) {: #fail-slug .rule }

HEAD|GET|POST PING_ENDPOINT<ping-key/<slug>/fail

Signals to SITE_NAME that the job has failed. Actively signaling a failure minimizes the delay from your monitored service failing to you receiving an alert.

SITE_NAME identifies the check by project's ping key and check's slug included in the URL.

Response Codes

200 OK

The request succeeded.

404 not found

Could not find a check with the specified ping key and slug combination.

409 ambiguous slug

Ambiguous, the slug matched multiple checks.

Example

GET /fqOOd6-F4MMNuCEnzTU01w/database-backup/fail HTTP/1.0
Host: hc-ping.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 09:58:23 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 2
Connection: close
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

OK

Report Script's Exit Status (Using Slug) {: #exitcode-slug .rule }

HEAD|GET|POST PING_ENDPOINT<ping-key>/<slug>/<exit-status>

Sends a success or failure signal depending on the exit status included in the URL. The exit status is a 0-255 integer. SITE_NAME interprets 0 as success and all other values as failure.

SITE_NAME identifies the check by project's ping key and check's slug included in the URL.

Response Codes

200 OK

The request succeeded.

400 invalid url format

The URL does not match the expected format.

404 not found

Could not find a check with the specified ping key and slug combination.

409 ambiguous slug

Ambiguous, the slug matched multiple checks.

Example

GET /fqOOd6-F4MMNuCEnzTU01w/database-backup/1 HTTP/1.0
Host: hc-ping.com

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 09:58:23 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 2
Connection: close
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *

OK