API monitoring and automated endpoint testing

Availability checks are not correctness checks

A basic uptime check confirms that something answered. API monitoring confirms that the answer is correct: the right status code, the right shape, the right values and an acceptable latency. That difference is what catches a deploy that returns an empty list, a null price or a stale cache.

• Assert the HTTP status code exactly rather than accepting any 2xx.
• Assert on JSON fields so a structurally valid but empty payload fails.
• Assert a latency ceiling to catch degradation before it becomes downtime.

Build a suite, not a single request

Real user journeys touch several endpoints. Group them into a project so a run exercises authentication, a read, a write and a cleanup in sequence, and report the whole suite as one result you can act on.

• Reusable headers and authentication across requests in a project.
• Any HTTP method, with JSON bodies for POST, PUT and PATCH.
• Manual runs for verifying a deploy, scheduled runs for continuous coverage.

Scheduling and alerting

Choose how often each project runs — after every deploy window, hourly, or once a day for low-risk contract checks. When a run fails, the notification names the request, the assertion that failed and the observed value, so triage starts with facts instead of guesswork.

Where API monitoring fits with uptime and SSL

Use uptime checks for reachability, API tests for correctness, and certificate and domain monitoring for the infrastructure that silently expires. Together they cover the three ways production usually breaks.