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Keeping-Server-Awake #95

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16 changes: 16 additions & 0 deletions .github/workflows/cronjob.yml
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name: Ping Server

on:
schedule:
- cron: "*/10 * * * *"
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@mferryRV mferryRV Oct 24, 2023

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Is this frequent enough? Need to make sure you account for variations in cronjob startup time. If it shuts down after 15 min of inactivity then this 10 min timer should be fine. If it shuts down after 10 min of inactivity, you should shorten a bit e.g. 8 min


jobs:
ping:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest

steps:
- name: Checkout code
uses: actions/checkout@v2

- name: Run Ping Script
run: /usr/bin/node /server/serverPing.js
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@mferryRV mferryRV Oct 24, 2023

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Do you need to run npm i to install dependencies? Should these dependencies include the full project or just the two from pingServer?

43 changes: 34 additions & 9 deletions package-lock.json
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2 changes: 2 additions & 0 deletions package.json
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Expand Up @@ -78,6 +78,7 @@
"dependencies": {
"@babel/runtime": "^7.22.6",
"bootstrap": "^5.3.2",
"child_process": "^1.0.2",
"dotenv": "^16.3.1",
"express": "^4.18.2",
"helmet": "^7.0.0",
Expand All @@ -87,6 +88,7 @@
"react-player": "^2.13.0",
"react-range": "^1.8.14",
"react-slider": "^2.0.6",
"util": "^0.12.5",
"winston": "^3.10.0"
},
"engines": {
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1 change: 1 addition & 0 deletions server/cronjob.txt
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*/10 * * * * /usr/bin/node /server/serverPing.js
15 changes: 15 additions & 0 deletions server/serverPing.js
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const child_process = require("child_process"); //to run command-line tools
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@mferryRV mferryRV Oct 24, 2023

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Do you really need to run JavaScript for this? Or could you just run ping $URL on the command line directly?

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@munozirianni1988 munozirianni1988 Oct 24, 2023

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Hi Matthew, thank you for all your comments. Really appreciate it! I think the only dependencies that should be included are the ones from pingServer. For running ping $URL on the command line directly, I wasn't sure how to do it, so I will have a read and change it. If you have any documentation recommendation that would be great.

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@mferryRV mferryRV Oct 24, 2023

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Sure thing @munozirianni1988 - we're getting to the meat and potatoes of software engineering now!

I would look at curl for making HTTP requests from the command line, e.g.:

curl https://google.com

To make sure the response is good, you could look at HTTP status codes.

To see the requests that curl is making - or any app for that matter - you can use HTTPdump. It allows you to create a fake website or API endpoint and see what your code is sending on requests.

I'd also recommend looking at the monthly usage limits for Render to make sure that you can run the app all the time without running out of usage. You get 750 hours / month (31.25 days) but if those hours cover both the server and the database, you would only get 15.125 days for those two instances.

If you can't run it 24 hours a day, I'd recommend running your cronjob only during the 12 hours you think it will be most useful (e.g. 8am - 8pm every day, or 14 hours a day but it's off on Sundays). You could add additional optimisation by caching the database response in the API server, so we only hit the database once on startup (e.g. with node-fetch-cache). This would allow the database to be off most of the time, and the data only changes on deployment so it wouldn't get out-of-date.

Also make sure you look at the Github Actions free tier limits to make sure your cronjob will run all month. It may also help you ask questions like "Is it better to have a new job every 10 minutes or a 4-hour job that does something every 10 minutes?"

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@munozirianni1988 munozirianni1988 Oct 25, 2023

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Oh wow! Like we say in Cuba: el mango del arroz con mango! hahaha. I will dive into all this information as soon as I get home today. I wouldn't have a clue as to where to start looking/researching for all this, and all I was finding were very long complicated solutions. Thank you very much @mferryRV !

const util = require("util"); //to handle asynchronous functions

const exec = util.promisify(child_process.exec);

async function ping(hostname) {
try {
const { stdout, stderr } = await exec(`ping -c 3 ${hostname}`);
return { stderr, stdout };
} catch (err) {
return err;
}
}

ping("starter-kit-al84.onrender.com");
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@mferryRV mferryRV Oct 24, 2023

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This should be an environment variable