WebSocket Monitoring: Keeping Long-Lived Connections Healthy

HTTP monitoring tests a request-response cycle. WebSocket monitoring needs to test: 1. The connection can be established 2. Messages can be sent and received (round-trip) 3. The connection stays alive over time (no silent disconnects) 4. Reconnection works when the server restarts

Most uptime monitors test only #1 and miss the rest.

Implement application-level heartbeats: ```javascript const ws = new WebSocket('wss://your-app.com/ws'); let lastPong = Date.now();

setInterval(() => { ws.send(JSON.stringify({ type: 'ping' })); if (Date.now() - lastPong > 30000) { // Server hasn't responded in 30s — connection is dead ws.close(); reconnect(); } }, 15000);

ws.onmessage = (msg) => { const data = JSON.parse(msg.data); if (data.type === 'pong') lastPong = Date.now(); }; ```

Use a scheduled function that opens a WebSocket connection, sends a test message, waits for a response, then pings AlertsDock: ```python async def check_websocket(): async with websockets.connect('wss://your-app.com/ws') as ws: await ws.send(json.dumps({'type': 'ping'})) response = await asyncio.wait_for(ws.recv(), timeout=5) if json.loads(response)['type'] == 'pong': requests.get('https://alertsdock.com/ping/{uuid}') ```

Schedule this as a cron job that runs every 5 minutes.

Monitor active WebSocket connection count alongside your HTTP monitoring: - Alert when connection count drops to zero (server restarted, connections not reconnecting) - Alert when connection count spikes 5x (potential DDoS or connection leak)

Every WebSocket client should implement exponential backoff reconnection: ```javascript let reconnectDelay = 1000; // start at 1s function reconnect() { setTimeout(() => { connect(); reconnectDelay = Math.min(reconnectDelay * 2, 30000); }, reconnectDelay); } ```