Ran into a problem at work looking into how to get actual uptime monitoring of our app, which, just pinging the url isn’t just enough. Sure that indicates we’re ‘up’, but what if a user can’t login? What happens when a user can log in but isn’t getting useful data back from our backend services? That was the challenge. Sure, we could turn to a SaaS to do it, or to rely on another team to do this, but what’s the fun in that? So looked into using open source tools we found which was extendable, could be run on any cloud provider, and had a plugin ecosystem. watchmen Since we needed some sort of browser , with a little tooling around, we were able to find a small, easy to use library that almost anyone, not even a developer could write (plus a browser extension which records clicks and translates to ) which lowers the barrier if we need deeper clicks to verify our site uptime. (don’t mind the name) fit the bill for exactly what we needed. automation javascript Nightmare A teammate and I rolled it all into one and we realized the potential for helping out other teams, not only within Comcast but out in the world, they could potentially use this as well, so we made the decision to open source our code. So here it is, a plugin for watchmen that uses the Nightmare browser automation library that lets you do synthetic monitoring to verify that your site or app is up to your standards. I could get more into the boring details of all the infrastructure and why and how of its deployed but I’ll save that for another story. _watchmen-ping-nightmare - A plugin for watchmen that uses nightmare and an electron browser to monitor websites_github.com Comcast/watchmen-ping-nightmare You can download the package from npmjs here: _Watchmen nightmarejs ping integration_www.npmjs.com watchmen-ping-nightmare is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the family. We are now and happy to opportunities. Hacker Noon @AMI accepting submissions discuss advertising & sponsorship To learn more, , , or simply, read our about page like/message us on Facebook tweet/DM @HackerNoon. If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our and . Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted! latest tech stories trending tech stories
