Monitoring Rails POST requests

home_controller.rb

class HomeController < ApplicationController
  skip_before_filter :verify_authenticity_token, :only => :post_up
  
  def index
  end
  
  # monitored by http://uptime.alal.com/uptime/
  # this will test if Rails is up and responding to GETs and POSTs
  def rails_up
    url = URI.parse(url_for(:action => 'post_up'))
    res = Net::HTTP.post_form(url, {})
    
    # body will be "success" if POST request is successful
    render :text => res.body
  rescue Exception => e
    render :text => "error: #{e.to_s}"
  end
  
  # verify that POST requests are working
  # we've had problems with Apache segfaulting on POSTs
  def post_up
    render :text => request.post? ? "success" : "only POST allowed"
  end
end