Ping to websites periodically with cronjob

Welcome to the final part of our series on Automating Periodic Website Pinging. In this post, we'll write a Python script to ping websites and set up a cron job to run this script periodically in our Conda environment.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, ensure you have:

• Basic command line familiarity
• Access to a Unix or Unix-like operating system (such as Linux or macOS)
• Miniconda or Anaconda installed
• Completed the setup from the previous parts of this series

Installing Required Python Packages

First, let's install the necessary Python packages. Activate your Conda environment and install the following packages:

conda activate env_ping_website
pip install requests openpyxl

Python Script for Pinging Websites

Now, let's create our Python script to ping websites and record their status. Let us name it as ping_websites.py in our ping_website directory:

import requests
from openpyxl import Workbook, load_workbook
from datetime import datetime
import os

websites = ["https://karpathy.ai/", "https://github.com/", "https://www.google.com/"]

excel_file = "website_status.xlsx"

def ping_website(url):
    try:
        response = requests.get(url, timeout=5)
        return response.status_code == 200
    except requests.RequestException:
        return False

def write_to_excel(file_path, timestamp, status_data):
    if os.path.exists(file_path):
        workbook = load_workbook(file_path)
        sheet = workbook.active
    else:
        workbook = Workbook()
        sheet = workbook.active
        sheet.append(["Timestamp"] + websites)
    
    row_data = [timestamp] + status_data
    sheet.append(row_data)
    
    workbook.save(file_path)

def main():
    timestamp = datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
    status_data = ["Up" if ping_website(website) else "Down" for website in websites]
    
    write_to_excel(excel_file, timestamp, status_data)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

This script does the following:

• Pings a list of websites
• Records their status (Up or Down) along with a timestamp
• Writes the results to an Excel file

Updating the Bash Script

Let's update our bash script to run the Python script. Modify ping_website.sh (refer to part 2 of series) as follows:

   #!/bin/bash
   
   source ~/miniconda3/etc/profile.d/conda.sh
   conda activate env_ping_website
   
   which python
   
   cd /home/username/ping_website
   
   echo $PWD
  
  python ping_websites.py

Make sure to replace "username" with your actual username.

Setting Up the Cron Job

Now, let's set up the cron job to run our script every 5 minutes. Open the crontab editor:

crontab -e

Add the following line:

*/5 * * * * /home/username/ping_website/ping_website.sh  >> /home/username/ping_website/ping_website.log 2>&1

Again, replace "username" with your actual username.

Checking the Output

After the cron job runs for a while, we should see an Excel file named website_status.xlsx in our ping_website directory. The content will look something like this:

Conclusion

In this series, we've accomplished the following:

• Set up a Conda environment for our website pinging project
• Created a bash script to activate our Conda environment
• Written a Python script to ping websites and record their status
• Set up a cron job to run our script periodically

This setup allows us to automatically monitor the status of multiple websites and keep a record of their uptime.