Auto-updated server stats in clients

[loftar]

I notice, from the HTTP logs, that there are lots of custom clients that repeatedly poll the index page for more-or-less live server stats (in fact, this represents the vast part of HTTP traffic altogether). I don't actively mind this or anything like that (it doesn't put any particular strain on the server), but it seems a slight bit retarded when there are far better ways to monitor the server status, which also give truly live and instantaneous updates, rather than periodically refreshed ones.

First of all, there's http://www.havenandhearth.com/mt/srv-mon (don't follow that link in your browser; it won't do you any good at all as browsers aren't typically very good at handling that kind of traffic), which is a long-polling text stream of server status updates. Just open the URL and continuously read lines with updates which are sent in real-time as they happen.

Second, if you have a few screws loose and really want to parse HTML for whatever reason, you can do the same thing that the index page itself does, namely fetching http://www.havenandhearth.com/portal/index/status. It will not return a page until a server status change actually happens. For somewhat more advanced usage, you can pass it the seq URL parameter (.../status?seq=47, for instance), which will return a page immediately if the sequence number given doesn't match the latest update, and only wait if it does match. The returned page has a corresponding "sequence" attribute on its root element, indicating the latest update sequence number. Either way, there should be no real reason to use this method in preference to the above method.

[APXEOLOG]

<3

[zebratul]

don't follow that link in your browser; it won't do you any good at all as browsers aren't typically very good at handling that kind of traffic.

Couldnt resist opening the link in browser after your words. Browser didnt crash, system didnt BSOD, computer didnt explode.
Disappointment.

Thanks for your work, however, as always (:

[shubla]

As a defense I say that how should one know these top secret urls like http://www.havenandhearth.com/portal/index/status ?

[Ukhata]

don't follow that link in your browser; it won't do you any good at all as browsers aren't typically very good at handling that kind of traffic.

Couldnt resist opening the link in browser after your words. Browser didnt crash, system didnt BSOD, computer didnt explode.
Disappointment.

Thanks for your work, however, as always (:

best way to make us do something, tell us we shouldnt
first thing i did is open it in a browser

[loftar]

As a defense I say that how should one know these top secret urls like http://www.havenandhearth.com/portal/index/status ?

Well, I wasn't actually accusing anyone to begin with, but since you're asking, you could have seen that if you had looked at how the index page is constructed.

Disappointment.

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear enough; it was indeed as a precaution against disappointment that I added that note, since many browsers will simply just not display anything at all.

[Granger]

since many browsers will simply just not display anything at all.

Firefox works fine.

[loftar]

Firefox works fine.

Yes, I noticed actually. I guess it has to do with how different browsers do buffering. Chromium probably doesn't begin to parse input until it has gotten a certain window of data to parse, or something like that.

[mvgulik]

... For somewhat more advanced usage, you can pass it the seq URL parameter (.../status?seq=47, for instance), which will return a page immediately if the sequence number given doesn't match the latest update, and only wait if it does match. The returned page has a corresponding "sequence" attribute on its root element, indicating the latest update sequence number..

Really advanced would be if it would include some older server status changes (at least: going offline/back online) if given an older sequence number.
Even if its record capability is limited to just one day it would be (somewhat) useful. Although I doubt keeping a record of a week, month or longer would pose any problems.