# django-alive 🕺
[](https://travis-ci.org/lincolnloop/django-alive)
[](https://app.codacy.com/project/ipmb/django-alive/dashboard)
[](https://pypi.org/project/django-alive/)

Provides two healthcheck endpoints for your Django application:
### Alive
Verifies the WSGI server is responding.
* Default URL: `/-/alive/`
* Success:
* status code: `200`
* content: `ok`
* Failure: This view never returns a failure. A failure would mean your WSGI server is not running.
### Health
Verifies services are ready.
* Default URL: `/-/health/`
* Success:
* status_code: `200`
* content: `{"healthy": true}`
* Failure:
* status_code: `503`
* content: `{"healthy": false, "errors": ["error 1", "error 2"]}`
By default the health endpoint will test the database connection, but can be configured to check the cache, staticfiles, or any additional custom checks.
Supports Django 1.10+ on both Python 2 & 3.
## Install
```
pip install django-alive
```
## Configure
Add this to your project's `urlpatterns`:
```python
path("-/", include("django_alive.urls"))
```
For versions before Django 2.0, use:
```python
url(r"-/", include("django_alive.urls"))
```
If you wish to use the `healthcheck` [management command](#management-command), add
`django_alive` to the `INSTALLED_APPS`.
## Enabling Checks
The default "health" endpoint will test a simple `SELECT 1` query on the database. Additional checks can be enabled in your Django settings.
Use the `ALIVE_CHECKS` setting to configure the checks to include. It is a dictionary with the path to a Python function as a key and any keyword arguments to pass to that function as a value. A full example:
```python
ALIVE_CHECKS = {
"django_alive.checks.check_database": {},
"django_alive.checks.check_staticfile": {
"filename": "img/favicon.ico",
},
"django_alive.checks.check_cache": {
"cache": "session",
"key": "test123",
},
"django_alive.checks.check_migrations": {},
}
```
### Built-in Checks
Defined in `django_alive.checks`.
```python
def check_cache(key="django-alive", cache="default")
```
Fetch a cache key against the specified cache.
#### Parameters:
- `key` (`str`): Cache key to fetch (does not need to exist)
- `cache` (`str`): Cache alias to execute against
---
```python
def check_database(query="SELECT 1", database="default")
```
Run a SQL query against the specified database.
#### Parameters:
- `query` (`str`): SQL to execute
- `database` (`str`): Database alias to execute against
---
```python
def check_migrations(alias=None)
```
Verify all defined migrations have been applied
#### Parameters:
- `alias` (`str`): An optional database alias (default: check all defined databases)
---
```python
def check_staticfile(filename)
```
Verify a static file is reachable
#### Parameters:
- `filename` (`str`): static file to verify
## Management Command
In addition to the view, the configured healthchecks can also be run via a management command with `manage.py healthcheck`. This will exit with an error code if all the healthchecks do not pass.
## Custom Checks
`django-alive` is designed to easily extend with your own custom checks. Simply define a function which performs your check and raises a `django_alive.HealthcheckFailure` exception in the event of a failure. See [`checks.py`](https://github.com/lincolnloop/django-alive/blob/master/django_alive/checks.py) for some examples on how to write a check.
## Disabling `ALLOWED_HOSTS` for Healthchecks
Often, load balancers will not pass a `Host` header when probing a healthcheck endpoint. This presents a problem for [Django's host header validation](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.1/topics/security/#host-headers-virtual-hosting). A middleware is included that will turn off the host checking only for the healthcheck endpoints. This is safe since these views never do anything with the `Host` header.
Enable the middleware by inserting this **at the beginning** of your `MIDDLEWARE`:
```python
MIDDLEWARE = [
"django_alive.middleware.healthcheck_bypass_host_check",
# ...
]
```
## Handling `SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT`
If your load balancer is doing HTTPS termination and you have `SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT=True` in your settings, you want to make sure that your healtcheck URLs are not also redirected to HTTPS. In that case, add the following to your settings:
```python
SECURE_REDIRECT_EXEMPT = [r"^-/"] # django-alive URLs
```
1.2.1 (2021-07-23)
------------------
* Update PyPI metadata
1.2.0 (2021-07-23)
------------------
* Updated test matrix. Python 2 no longer "officially" supported.
* Prevent Traceback in middleware if URLs are not setup
1.1.0 (2019-11-06)
------------------
* Added `healthcheck` management command
* Added optional `check_migrations` healthcheck
1.0.1 (2018-09-10)
------------------
* Documentation improvements
* Python 3.7 support
1.0.0 (2018-08-21)
------------------
* Initial release