HTTP Tests

Overview

HTTP tests allow you to send HTTP requests to your applications' API endpoints in order to verify that they are responding to requests, as well as that they meet any conditions you define-such as overall response time, status code, and header or body content.

HTTP tests can be run from managed and private locations depending on whether you are willing to monitor your endpoints from outside or inside your network. HTTP tests can run on a schedule, on-demand, or directly within your CI/CD pipelines.

Configuration

After choosing the type of test you are willing to create (HTTP, SSL, TCP, or DNS test), you can define your test’s request.

Define request

1. Choose the HTTP Method and specify the URL to query. Available methods are: GET, POST, PATCH, PUT, HEAD, DELETE, and OPTIONS. Both http and https URLs are supported.
2. Enrich your HTTP request with Advanced Options (optional):

openssl pkcs12 -in <CERT>.p12 -out <CERT_KEY>.key -nodes -nocerts 
openssl pkcs12 -in <CERT>.p12 -out <CERT>.cert -nokeys

3. Name your HTTP test.
4. Add env Tags as well as any other tag to your HTTP test. You can then use these tags to quickly filter through your Synthetic tests on the Synthetic Monitoring homepage.
5. Select the Locations to run your HTTP test from: HTTP tests can run from managed and private locations depending on whether you are willing to monitor your endpoints from outside or inside your network.

Click on Test URL to try out the request configuration. You will see a response preview show up on the right side of your screen.

Specify test frequency

HTTP tests can run:

• On a schedule to ensure your most important endpoints are always accessible to your users. Select the frequency you want Datadog to run your HTTP test.

• Within your CI/CD pipelines to start shipping without fearing faulty code might impact your customers experience.
• On-demand to run your tests whenever makes the most sense for your teams.

Define assertions

Assertions define what an expected test result is. When hitting Test URL basic assertions on response time, status code, and header content-type are added based on the response that was obtained. You must define at least one assertion for your test to monitor.

Note: HTTP tests can uncompress bodies with the following content-encoding headers: br, deflate, gzip, and identity.

You can create up to 10 assertions per API test by clicking on New Assertion or by clicking directly on the response preview:

Define alert conditions

Set alert conditions to determine the circumstances under which you want a test to fail and trigger an alert.

Alerting rule

When you set the alert conditions to: An alert is triggered if any assertion fails for X minutes from any n of N locations, an alert is triggered only if these two conditions are true:

• At least one location was in failure (at least one assertion failed) during the last X minutes;
• At one moment during the last X minutes, at least n locations were in failure.

Fast retry

Your test can trigger retries in case of failed test result. By default, the retries are performed 300 ms after the first failed test result-this interval can be configured via the API.

Location uptime is computed on a per-evaluation basis (whether the last test result before evaluation was up or down). The total uptime is computed based on the configured alert conditions. Notifications sent are based on the total uptime.

Notify your team

A notification is sent by your test based on the alerting conditions previously defined. Use this section to define how and what message to send to your teams.

1. Similar to monitors, select users and/or services that should receive notifications either by adding an @notificationto the message or by searching for team members and connected integrations with the drop-down box.

2. Enter the notification message for your test. This field allows standard Markdown formatting and supports the following conditional variables:

   Conditional Variable	Description
   {{#is_alert}}	Show when the test alerts.
   {{^is_alert}}	Show unless the test alerts.
   {{#is_recovery}}	Show when the test recovers from alert.
   {{^is_recovery}}	Show unless the test recovers from alert.

3. Specify how often you want your test to re-send the notification message in case of test failure. To prevent renotification on failing tests, leave the option as Never renotify if the monitor has not been resolved.

Email notifications include the message defined in this section as well as a summary of failed assertions. Notifications example:

Click on Save to save your test and have Datadog start executing it.

Variables

Create local variables

You can create local variables by defining their values from one of the below available builtins:

Use variables

You can use the global variables defined in the Settings and the locally defined variables in the URL, Advanced Options, and assertions of your HTTP tests. To display your list of variables, type {{ in your desired field:

Test failure

A test is considered FAILED if it does not satisfy one or several assertions or if the request prematurely failed. In some cases, the test can indeed fail without being able to test the assertions against the endpoint, these reasons include:

Further Reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Introducing Datadog Synthetic MonitoringBLOG Get started with HTTP testsDOCUMENTATION Run HTTP tests on internal endpointsDOCUMENTATION