Throb

Version: 0.1.0 Master build:

This library gives you the tools to run a really lightweight heartbeat or ping server. It's useful for servers monitored by load balancers or services like Pingdom. It can be installed in whichever way you prefer, but I recommend NPM.

Command line

$ throb -p 3000

$ throb -h

  Usage: throb [options]

  Options:

    -h, --help                 output usage information
    -V, --version              output the version number
    -H, --hostname [hostname]  server hostname
    -p, --port [port]          server port
    -t, --tls                  use TLS (SSL)
    -v, --verbose              output request log

Custom server

You can use this library with your own http or https server.

var throb = require('throb');
var http = require('http');

var server = http.createServer().listen(3000);
throb(server, function(req, res, next) {
    // optional callback
    next();
});

Custom URLs

You can even define your own endpoint URLs. You should define them as regular expressions.

var throb = require('throb');
var http = require('http');

var options = {
    heartbeat: /^\/heartbeat/,
    ping: /^\/ping/
};

var server = http.createServer().listen(3000);
throb(server, options, function(req, res, next) {
    // optional callback
    next();
});

404 Not Found

The default behaviour of the server is to respond with a 404 Not Found response if a request is made to an invalid endpoint. This behaviour can be modified or even disabled entirely.

var throb = require('throb');
var http = require('http');

var options = {
    notFoundCallback: function(req, res, fn) {
        // Handle 404s yourself
    }
};

var server = http.createServer().listen(3000);
throb(server, options);

Requests

The server handles two types of request. Typically you would only use one of them.

• Heartbeat simply returns 200 OK on success.
• Ping returns 200 OK and Pong as a plain text body.

# Request ----->
GET /heartbeat HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:3000

# Response <-----
HTTP/1.1 200 OK

# Request ----->
GET /ping HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost:3000

# Response <-----
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/plain

Pong

Contributing

I accept contributions to the source via Pull Request, but passing unit tests must be included before it will be considered for merge. Given the early stage of this project and the severe lack of current tests, this is a little hypocritical; but start as you mean to go on, etc.

$ make install
$ make tests

If you have Vagrant installed, you can build the dev environment to assist development. The repository will be mounted in /srv.

$ vagrant up
$ vagrant ssh

Welcome to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.2.0-23-generic x86_64)
$ cd /srv

License

The content of this library is released under the MIT License by Andrew Lawson. You can find a copy of this license at http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit or in LICENSE