HTTP tests allow you to send HTTP requests to your applications' API endpoints to verify responses and defined conditions, such as overall response time, expected status code, header, or body content.
HTTP tests can run from both managed and private locations depending on your preference for running the test from outside or inside your network. HTTP tests can run on a schedule, on-demand, or directly within your CI/CD pipelines.
After choosing to create an HTTP test, define your test’s request.
GET, POST, PATCH, PUT, HEAD, DELETE, and OPTIONS. Both http and https URLs are supported.user-agent header).<COOKIE_NAME1>=<COOKIE_VALUE1>; <COOKIE_NAME2>=<COOKIE_VALUE2>.text/plain, application/json, text/xml, text/html, application/x-www-form-urlendcoded, or None) you want to add to your HTTP request..crt) and the associated private key (.key) in PEM format. You can use the openssl library to convert your certificates. For example you can convert a PKCS12 certificate to PEM formatted private keys and certificates.openssl pkcs12 -in <CERT>.p12 -out <CERT_KEY>.key -nodes -nocerts
openssl pkcs12 -in <CERT>.p12 -out <CERT>.cert -nokeys
http://<YOUR_USER>:<YOUR_PWD>@<YOUR_IP>:<YOUR_PORT>).Name your HTTP test.
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.
Select the Locations to run your HTTP test from. HTTP tests can run from both managed and private locations depending on your preference for running the test 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.
HTTP tests can run:
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.
| Type | Operator | Value type |
|---|---|---|
| body | contains, does not contain, is, is not,matches, does not match,jsonpath, xpath | String Regex String, Regex |
| header | contains, does not contain, is, is not,matches, does not match | String Regex |
| response time | is less than | Integer (ms) |
| status code | is, is not | Integer |
Note: HTTP tests can decompress bodies with the following content-encoding headers: br, deflate, gzip, and identity.
You can create up to 20 assertions per API test by clicking on New Assertion or by clicking directly on the response preview:
Set alert conditions to determine the circumstances under which you want a test to fail and trigger an alert.
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:
Your test can trigger retries in case of a failed test result. By default, the retries are performed 300 ms after the first failed test result. The retry interval can be configured with 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.
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.
Similar to monitors, select users and/or services that should receive notifications either by adding a @notification to the message or by searching for team members and connected integrations with the drop-down box.
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. |
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 Save to save and start your test.
You can create local variables by clicking on Create Local Variable at the top right hand corner of your test configuration form. You can define their values from one of the below available builtins:
{{ numeric(n) }}n digits.{{ alphabetic(n) }}n letters.{{ alphanumeric(n) }}n characters.{{ date(n, format) }}n days.{{ timestamp(n, unit) }}n chosen unit.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:
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:
CONNRESETDNSINVALID_REQUESTSSLTIMEOUTTIMEOUT can happen:TIMEOUT: The request couldn’t be completed in a reasonable time. indicates that the timeout happened at the TCP socket connection level.TIMEOUT: Retrieving the response couldn’t be completed in a reasonable time. indicates that the timeout happened on the overall run (which includes TCP socket connection, data transfer, and assertions).By default, only users with the Datadog Admin and Datadog Standard roles can create, edit, and delete Synthetic HTTP tests. To get create, edit, and delete access to Synthetic HTTP tests, upgrade your user to one of those two default roles.
If you have access to the custom role feature, add your user to any custom role that includes synthetics_read and synthetics_write permissions.
Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:
