Health Check Endpoints Setup for Web Application

Health Check Endpoints Setup

Health check endpoints verify application health. Load balancers, Kubernetes, monitoring systems query them to exclude unhealthy instances from rotation.

Two check types

Liveness — is the process alive. If not, container restarts. Should respond even with degraded dependencies.

Readiness — is it ready to accept traffic. If not, balancer doesn't route requests. Checks DB, cache, external services.

Laravel: health check endpoints

// routes/api.php
Route::get('/health/live', fn() => response()->json(['status' => 'ok']));

Route::get('/health/ready', function () {
    $checks = [];

    // Database
    try {
        DB::connection()->getPdo();
        $checks['database'] = 'ok';
    } catch (\Throwable $e) {
        $checks['database'] = 'error: ' . $e->getMessage();
    }

    // Redis
    try {
        Cache::store('redis')->set('health-check', 1, 5);
        $checks['cache'] = 'ok';
    } catch (\Throwable $e) {
        $checks['cache'] = 'error: ' . $e->getMessage();
    }

    $healthy = !str_contains(implode('', $checks), 'error');
    $status  = $healthy ? 200 : 503;

    return response()->json([
        'status' => $healthy ? 'healthy' : 'unhealthy',
        'checks' => $checks,
    ], $status);
});

Node.js Express

app.get('/health/live', (_req, res) => {
  res.json({ status: 'ok', uptime: process.uptime() });
});

app.get('/health/ready', async (_req, res) => {
  const checks: Record<string, string> = {};

  try {
    await db.query('SELECT 1');
    checks.database = 'ok';
  } catch (e) {
    checks.database = `error: ${e}`;
  }

  try {
    await redis.ping();
    checks.redis = 'ok';
  } catch (e) {
    checks.redis = `error: ${e}`;
  }

  const healthy = Object.values(checks).every(v => v === 'ok');
  res.status(healthy ? 200 : 503).json({ status: healthy ? 'healthy' : 'unhealthy', checks });
});

Kubernetes probes

containers:
  - name: app
    livenessProbe:
      httpGet:
        path: /health/live
        port: 8080
      initialDelaySeconds: 30
      periodSeconds: 10
      failureThreshold: 3

    readinessProbe:
      httpGet:
        path: /health/ready
        port: 8080
      initialDelaySeconds: 10
      periodSeconds: 5
      failureThreshold: 3

Implementation timeline

Basic liveness + readiness endpoints with DB and Redis checks: 0.5–1 day. With Kubernetes and monitoring system integration: 1–2 days.