README.md

Website Status Notifier

A Python script that helps check the online status of a list of user-provided websites.

Installation

1. Download Python (Project developed using Python 3.9)
2. Clone this repository

Ways to use

1. Temporarily

1. Run python server_status.py
2. Enter the name of the website you want to check including the protocol (http[s]) and the top-level domain
   1. Ex: https://google.com

2. Permanently

1. Additionally install the dotenv module with pip install python-dotenv
2. Modify the config_template.json file replacing the provided placeholders with your own data in the same format.
   1. The necessary configuration variables are:
      1. "recipients": List of strings representing email addresses to send status updates to
      2. "urls": List of strings representing website urls following same format as mentioned above
      3. "emails_fail_only": Boolean representing whether to send emails only if a status check fails.
         1. true indicates that you want the server to send an email when at least one status check fails.
         2. This can be used with a lower "check_interval_secs" to prevent a flood of emails while also having the status check run constantly.
      4. "check_interval_secs": Integer representing the number of seconds to delay another round of status checks.
   2. You can rename the file as you wish, just make sure to pass the correct name when calling the script.
3. Create a .env file with your gmail address and APP PASSWORD
   1. If you want to use a different mailing client, you will have to modify perm_server_status with the client's required configuration.
   2. This program searches for environment variables named:
      1. USER_EMAIL
      2. APP_PASSWORD
4. Run python perm_server_status.py config_template.json to start the program.
   1. To stop the execution of the program, you can use CTRL-C or close the terminal instance.