Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring • Hacker News Board

Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring

#1

Post by eliot_sykes » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 5:44 PM UTC

Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring
monitorstxt.org

Re: Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring

#2

Post by crawshaw » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 6:09 PM UTC

Brilliant.

Given the target audience, I think a more concise description language that pseudo natural language would work better. Regardless, such a service can bring basic alerting to the huge number of sites which currently have nothing.

Re: Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring

#3

Post by cultureulterior » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 6:14 PM UTC

Ugh, natural language. Never works well.

Re: Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring

#4

Post by eliot_sykes » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 6:14 PM UTC

crawshaw wrote: post #2

Brilliant. Given the target audience, I think a more concise description language that pseudo natural language would work better. Regardless, such a service can bring basic alerting to the huge number of sites which currently have nothing.

Thanks for the feedback. I'd love to hear any ideas on language alternatives.

Re: Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring

#5

Post by kanwisher » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 6:17 PM UTC

Really love the idea of text file based monitoring, hate the cucumber interface. I stomach it in rails but I'm not a big fan of English in my code

Re: Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring

#6

Post by eliot_sykes » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 6:18 PM UTC

cultureulterior wrote: post #3

Ugh, natural language. Never works well.

I'm open to implementing alternative formats to Gherkin.

If you've got an idea of some psuedo code you could write that'd make the monitors.txt idea more attractive, please write some, I'm keen for feedback.

Re: Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring

#7

Post by eliot_sykes » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 6:19 PM UTC

So far people seem to like the idea, but not so keen on cucumber for the language. Please contribute any pseudo code ideas below as I want to get this right

Re: Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring

#8

Post by rednaught » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 6:20 PM UTC

Fantastic idea. I see humans.txt (http://humanstxt.org/) was an influence. Why not stay in a concise format like that?

Re: Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring

#9

Post by eliot_sykes » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 6:28 PM UTC

rednaught wrote: post #8

Fantastic idea. I see humans.txt ( http://humanstxt.org/ ) was an influence. Why not stay in a concise format like that?

I've not been able to figure out an alternative to cucumber that has the same flexibility and readability.

For example, I've not a clue yet on how to improve on this example:

  Feature: DuckDuckGo Search
    It should continue to kick ass
    And I should be able to search

    Scenario: Homepage performance
      When I go to http://www.duckduckgo.com
      Then I should see the page downloaded in less than 0.5 seconds
      And I should see the page assets downloaded in less than 2 seconds

    Scenario: Search over SSL
      Given I go to https://www.duckduckgo.com
      When I fill in "q" with "site:news.ycombinator.com"
      And I press submit
      Then I should be on https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com
      And I should see "Hacker News" within "h2"

Re: Monitors.txt - lazy webapp monitoring

#10

Post by nikcub » Sat, Nov 05, 2011, 6:29 PM UTC

I thought this was going to be as easy as 'if you can't reach /monitors.txt, then the site is down'

but seriously, does nobody else see a problem with your monitoring configuration being hosted on the site being monitored? It is a bit like asking a hospital patient to keep an eye on his own charts and to let you know if anything goes wrong ..

do people really switch monitoring companies often enough to justify having a standard configuration format?

ps. cucumber syntax is horrible because it perpetuates a 'everybody speaks english' view of the world