Django API Monitoring

Set up health check endpoints and uptime monitoring for your Django application. Works with Django REST Framework and standard Django views.

Simple Health View

# health/views.py
from django.http import JsonResponse
from datetime import datetime

def health(request):
    return JsonResponse({
        'status': 'healthy',
        'timestamp': datetime.utcnow().isoformat()
    })

# urls.py
from django.urls import path
from health import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('health/', views.health, name='health'),
]

Comprehensive Health Check

# health/views.py
from django.http import JsonResponse
from django.db import connection
from django.core.cache import cache
from django.conf import settings
from datetime import datetime
import time

def health(request):
    """Liveness probe - just confirms Django is running"""
    return JsonResponse({'status': 'healthy'})

def ready(request):
    """Readiness probe - checks all dependencies"""
    checks = {}
    healthy = True

    # Check database
    try:
        start = time.time()
        with connection.cursor() as cursor:
            cursor.execute('SELECT 1')
            cursor.fetchone()
        checks['database'] = {
            'status': 'ok',
            'response_time_ms': round((time.time() - start) * 1000, 2)
        }
    except Exception as e:
        healthy = False
        checks['database'] = {'status': 'error', 'message': str(e)}

    # Check cache (Redis/Memcached)
    try:
        start = time.time()
        cache.set('health_check', 'ok', 10)
        cache.get('health_check')
        checks['cache'] = {
            'status': 'ok',
            'response_time_ms': round((time.time() - start) * 1000, 2)
        }
    except Exception as e:
        healthy = False
        checks['cache'] = {'status': 'error', 'message': str(e)}

    response = {
        'status': 'healthy' if healthy else 'unhealthy',
        'timestamp': datetime.utcnow().isoformat(),
        'checks': checks,
        'version': getattr(settings, 'VERSION', 'unknown')
    }

    status_code = 200 if healthy else 503
    return JsonResponse(response, status=status_code)

Using django-health-check

For a more robust solution, use the django-health-check package:

# Install
pip install django-health-check

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    'health_check',
    'health_check.db',
    'health_check.cache',
    'health_check.storage',
    'health_check.contrib.migrations',
    'health_check.contrib.celery',  # if using Celery
    'health_check.contrib.redis',   # if using Redis
]

# urls.py
urlpatterns = [
    path('health/', include('health_check.urls')),
]

Django REST Framework

# health/views.py
from rest_framework.decorators import api_view, permission_classes
from rest_framework.permissions import AllowAny
from rest_framework.response import Response
from rest_framework import status
from django.db import connection

@api_view(['GET'])
@permission_classes([AllowAny])
def health(request):
    return Response({'status': 'healthy'})

@api_view(['GET'])
@permission_classes([AllowAny])
def ready(request):
    try:
        with connection.cursor() as cursor:
            cursor.execute('SELECT 1')
        return Response({
            'status': 'healthy',
            'checks': {'database': 'ok'}
        })
    except Exception as e:
        return Response({
            'status': 'unhealthy',
            'checks': {'database': str(e)}
        }, status=status.HTTP_503_SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE)

Exclude from Middleware

Skip authentication and logging for health checks:

# middleware.py
class HealthCheckMiddleware:
    def __init__(self, get_response):
        self.get_response = get_response

    def __call__(self, request):
        if request.path in ['/health/', '/ready/']:
            # Skip other middleware for health checks
            from health.views import health
            return health(request)
        return self.get_response(request)

Best Practices

• Separate liveness and readiness — /health for "is Django running", /ready for "are dependencies working"
• Skip authentication — Monitoring services need unauthenticated access
• Check migrations — Ensure database schema is up to date
• Add timeouts — Don't let slow checks hang forever