Django view doesn't output correctly

I've tried the suggestions of the devs who answered the question but the domain still outputs offline even if they're online.

The domains are from an uploaded csv file which will be listed on the database then output an online or offline status depending on the live status of the domain.

Django view doesn't output correctly

Oct 22 '19 Comments: 2 Answers: 2

0

I have a view which should output if the domain on the database is online or offline.

def pingDomain(request, page):
    page_object = get_object_or_404(Table, page=page)
    try:
        subprocess.check_call(['ping', '-c', '1',  page_object.page])
    except subprocess.CalledProcessError:
        host_online = True
    else:
        host_online = False
    context = {
        'online': host_online,
    }
    return render(request, 'home.html', context)

On the…

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Comments

[Pavel Vergeev]

If your end goal is to check website availability, I would suggest making a HEAD request to it, like so:

import requests  # requests library https://github.com/psf/requests

def pingDomain(request, page):
    page_object = get_object_or_404(Table, page=page)
    response = requests.head(url=page_object.page)
    context = {
         'online': response.ok
    }
    return render(request, 'home.html', context)

Here are the advantages:

• does not rely on the presence of the ping command in the os
• the above code checks whether the server responds to a HTTP request, but ping checks whether the service responds to a ICMP request
• the code is shorter :)

Is there any particular reason you've decided to use subprocess.check_call(['ping', '-c', '1', page_object.page])?

[Vicente G. Reyes]

I'm not really sure if you understood what I wanted to output on the template since you've mentioned that my end goal was to check the availability of the website or I'm not sure if you meant online/offline with website availability

[Vicente G. Reyes]

I'll definitely try this!

I just saw

subprocess.check_call(['ping', '-c', '1', page_object.page])

on stackoverflow so I used. Big lesson for me to understand code before using it.

[Vicente G. Reyes]

uhhh this doesn't return the online domains.

[Pavel Vergeev]

Wow :O

OK, at this point I can only suggest two things.

1. Use breakpoint() to inspect the variables inside the view;

2. Use this code for your reference: github.com/vergeev/17_sites_monito....

Tell me if something new comes up. :)

[Vicente G. Reyes]

Here's what I did

def pingDomain(request, page, url):
    page_object = get_object_or_404(Table, page=page)
    url = page_object.page
    response = requests.head(url)
    try:
        return requests.head(url).ok
    except requests.exceptions.ConnectionError:
        return False
    context = {
        'online': response.ok
    }
    return render(request, 'home.html', context)

Returns nothing :(

[rhymes]

Hi, aside from the logic being incorrect, see the correction in this answer:

answer re: Django view doesn't output correctly

Oct 22 '19

1

I believe what you're trying to achieve is the following:

def pingDomain(request, page):
    page_object = get_object_or_404(Table, page=page)
    try:
        subprocess.check_output(['ping', '-c', '1',  page_object.page])
        host_online = True
    except subprocess.CalledProcessError:
        host_online = False

    context = {
        'online': host_online,
    }
    return render(request, 'home.html', context)

Reason being I've changed your logic is because if the…

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I see a few additional problems:

• some domains, even if online, won't respond to ICMP packets (what ping uses for the echo), which means that you'll have false negatives :)

• another bug in your logic is that it assumes that any type of response from ping, even unreachable domains, will result in the host marked online

I suggest you add a call to breakpoint() to the line before the subprocess call and check what's going on manually

[Vicente G. Reyes]

Hey @rhymes ! Thanks! I'll check on this.