Rack::ECG

An easy to configure Rack middleware for Ruby web apps to provide a simple health check endpoint that tells you vital life signs about your app. All without the boilerplate service checking code you've written 10 times before.

(it's ECG as in electrocardiogram - as in the machine that monitors how your heart works)

Features

  • simple 1 line to drop into your config.ru or config/application.rb file to set up
  • reports git revision status
  • reports ActiveRecord migration schema version
  • reports errors if any check can't be executed for whatever reason
  • JSON output

Development Status travis ci build

Rack::ECG is extracted from production code in use at Envato. However, it is undergoing early development, and APIs and features are almost certain to be in flux.

Getting Started

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'rack-ecg'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install rack-ecg

Rails

In Rails you can add Rack::ECG to your config/application.rb as a middleware

# config/application.rb
# ...
config.middleware.use Rack::ECG
# ...

Rack

In Rack apps, you can add Rack::ECG to your config.ru

# config.ru
require 'rack/ecg'

use Rack::ECG

run MyRackApp

You can now hit your app and get a basic health check response from Rack::ECG

$ curl http://localhost:9292/_ecg
{
  "http": {
    "status": "ok",
    "value": "online"
  }
}

/_ecg will return a 200 HTTP status if all the checks are OK, or 500 status if any of the checks fail.

Configuration

There are options that can be passed to use Rack::ECG to customise how it works.

checks

Out of the box Rack::ECG doesn't do much and just checks that HTTP responses can be returned. There are a number of built in checks that Rack::ECG can be told to do (more to come)

  • :git_revision - this assumes your code is deployed via git and exists in a git repo, and that the git command can access it
  • :migration_version - this assumes you are using ActiveRecord migrations. It queries the schema_versions table and tells you what version the database is at.
  • :active_record - this checks if an ActiveRecord connection is active.
  • :redis - this checks if a Redis connection is active.

So using git_revision, migration_version, active_record, and redis would look like:

use Rack::ECG, checks: [:git_revision, :migration_version, :active_record, :redis]

$ curl http://localhost:9292/_ecg
{
  "http": {
    "status": "ok",
    "value": "online"
  },
  "git_revision": {
    "status": "ok",
    "value": "fb16e2c3b88af671c42880e6977bba34d7b05ba6\n"
  },
  "migration_version": {
    "status": "ok",
    "value": "20150319050250"
  },
  "active_record": {
    "status": "ok",
    "value": "true"
  },
  "redis": {
    "status": "ok",
    "value": "true"
  }
}

Checks with parameters

Some checks, such as the sequel check, require a parameter hash. In this case, you must provide the check as a tuple consisting of both the check name, and a hash of parameters:

use Rack::ECG, checks: [:http, [:sequel, {connection: "sqlite://my-sqlite.db"}]]

$ curl http://localhost:9292/_ecg
{
  "http": {
    "status": "ok",
    "value": "online"
  },
  "sequel": {
    "status": "ok",
    "value": "true"
  }
}

Because the sequel check operates on a per-connection basis, you can specify multiple Sequel databases to independently check, and provide a friendly name for disambiguation purposes:

use Rack::ECG, checks: [
  :http,
  [:sequel, {connection: 'sqlite://events.db', name: 'events'}],
  [:sequel, {connection: 'sqlite://projections.db', name: 'projections'}]
]

$ curl http://localhost:9292/_ecg

{
  "http": {
    "status": "ok",
    "value": "online"
  },
  "sequel_events": {
    "status": "ok",
    "value": "true"
  },
  "sequel_projections": {
    "status": "ok",
    "value": "true"
  }
}

at

By default Rack::ECG is mapped to a URL of /_ecg, you can set this to a different path by setting the at option. e.g.

use Rack::ECG, at: "/health_check"

More examples are provided in /examples

Requirements

  • Ruby >= 1.9.3 (this may be increased to Ruby >= 2.0 if it makes sense to use Ruby 2.0 features)
  • Rack
  • To use optional git_revision check, your deployed code needs to be in a git repo, and git command must be accessible on the server
  • To use optional migration_version check, you must be using ActiveRecord and migrations stored in schema_versions table

Contact

Maintainers

Authors

License

Rack::ECG uses MIT license. See LICENSE.txt for details.

Code of conduct

We welcome contribution from everyone. Read more about it in CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

Contributing

For bug fixes, documentation changes, and small features:

  1. Fork it ( https://github.com/[my-github-username]/rack-ecg/fork )
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  5. Create a new Pull Request

For larger new features: Do everything as above, but first also make contact with the project maintainers to be sure your change fits with the project direction and you won't be wasting effort going in the wrong direction.

About

This project is maintained by the Envato engineering team and funded by Envato.

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