ruby ping

ruby_ping.rb

# let us say you want to check if a host is reachable
# sometimes you need to be behind a private VPN or the host is just down
# and you want to do this on your local-machine and on Heroku
 
# can open your terminal and use ping on your local

# And can get a bash shell on Heroku as well - by `heroku run bash`
# but there is no `ping` binary there

#  ```bash
#  ~ $ ping
#  bash: ping: command not found
#  ```
  
# so can use this small ruby script 
# to check if host is reachable from the Heroku app

# EDIT: duh! there is https://github.com/djberg96/net-ping
# but need to install it
# this is ok for quick and dirty
require 'net/http'

def up?(site)
  Net::HTTP.new(site).head('/').kind_of? Net::HTTPOK
end

up?("google.com") #=> true

# can throw error for. can catch and return false if you want :-)
# 1. invalid host. SocketError: getaddrinfo: Name or service not known
# 2. connection refused. Errno::ECONNREFUSED: Connection refused - connect(2) for "<some-ip>" port 80