A status page for your Django app

A Django project usually has several moving parts that fail independently: the web app, the API, Celery workers, Celery beat, and the database. Monitoring each and rolling them into one status page gives you (and your users) a clear picture. Here's how — with nothing to install.

What to monitor in a Django app

• The web app — an HTTP check on your main URL with a keyword assertion.
• The API — a check on a /health/ endpoint (see how to monitor an API).
• Celery workers & beat — heartbeats, so a stalled worker or scheduler pages you.
• The database — a query heartbeat and/or TCP check (see how to monitor PostgreSQL).
• SSL certificate — expiry monitoring (SSL guide).

Add a health view

# health/views.py
from django.db import connection
from django.http import JsonResponse

def health(request):
    connection.ensure_connection()  # touch the DB
    return JsonResponse({"status": "ok"})

# urls.py
from health.views import health
urlpatterns += [path("health/", health)]

Point a StatusCat HTTP monitor at /health/ with a keyword assertion on "status":"ok". If the database is unreachable, the view errors and the monitor trips.

Monitor Celery with heartbeats

Add a periodic task that pings StatusCat, so a stalled worker or beat is caught:

# tasks.py
import requests
from celery import shared_task

@shared_task
def heartbeat():
    requests.get("https://statuscat.co/ping/your-celery-id", timeout=10)

Schedule it via Celery beat every few minutes. If the ping stops arriving, StatusCat alerts you. (More in how to monitor a cron job.)

Publish the status page

1. Group your monitors (web, API, workers, database).
2. Create a status page and add them as components.
3. Point it at status.yourapp.com.
4. Enable email subscribers for incident updates.

StatusCat does all of this from the outside, free for 50 monitors, with on-call and status pages included. New to monitoring? Start with what uptime monitoring is. On Next.js or Laravel instead? See status page for Next.js and status page for Laravel.