C#: How to check whether API server is up or down

 

---

Introduction

In this article, we will create a small utility using C# which tells us, whether our API server is up or down.

Purpose

Our purpose is to check the API server so, we can make a request for our resources. It is recommended that before making any request to server (API server in our case), we should make sure that our server is ready and up to handle our requests.

Throughout this article, we will create a tiny utility to solve our purpose.

Requirements

So, what do we require? We just want to know the status of our Web API server.

Creation of Utility

Let's create a simple console app, which tells us about the status of our API server:

• Open Visual Studio
• Create a C# console application, name it ‘knowserverstatus’

 

Add the following method:

public static  void ServerStatusBy(string url) 
  
        { 
  
            Ping pingSender = new  Ping(); 
  
            PingReply reply = pingSender.Send(url); 
  
  
            Console.WriteLine("Status of Host: {0}", url); 
  
  
            if (reply.Status == IPStatus.Success) 
  
            { 
  
                Console.WriteLine("IP Address: {0}", reply.Address.ToString()); 
  
                Console.WriteLine("RoundTrip time: {0}", reply.RoundtripTime); 
  
                Console.WriteLine("Time to live: {0}", reply.Options.Ttl); 
  
                Console.WriteLine("Don't fragment: {0}", reply.Options.DontFragment); 
  
                Console.WriteLine("Buffer size: {0}", reply.Buffer.Length); 
  
            } 
  
            else 
  
                Console.WriteLine(reply.Status); 
  
   }

 

Do not forget to add the following namespace:

using System.Net.NetworkInformation;

 

Call this method from main:

Console.Write("Enter server url:"); 
  
            var url = Console.ReadLine(); 
  
            Console.Clear(); 
  
            ServerStatusBy(url); 
  
            Console.ReadLine(); 

Run and we will get the following output:

 

 

 

 

Elaboration of code

Let's elaborate on above code. Here PING sends an ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) request to the requested server host/url and waits to receive the response back. If the value of Status is a success, it means our server is up and running.

Here PingReply returns all properties, described as:

 

Property	Description
Address	Gets the address of Host
Buffer	Gets the buffer of data received, its an array of bytes
PingOption	It handles how data is transmitted
RoundTrip	Gets the number of milliseconds to send ICMP echo request
Status	Gets the status of the request. If not a success, means Host is not up

 

Complete Source Code

using System; 
using System.Net.NetworkInformation; 
  
namespace knowserverstatus 
{ 
    class Program 
    { 
        static void  Main(string[] args) 
        { 
            Console.Write("Enter server url:"); 
            var url = Console.ReadLine(); 
            Console.Clear(); 
            ServerStatusBy(url); 
            Console.ReadLine(); 
        } 
  
        public static  void ServerStatusBy(string url) 
        { 
            Ping requestServer = new  Ping(); 
            PingReply serverResponse = requestServer.Send(url); 
  
            Console.WriteLine("Status of Host: {0}", url); 
  
            if (serverResponse.Status == IPStatus.Success)  
            { 
                Console.WriteLine("IP Address: {0}", serverResponse.Address.ToString()); 
                Console.WriteLine("RoundTrip time: {0}", serverResponse.RoundtripTime); 
                Console.WriteLine("Time to live: {0}", serverResponse.Options.Ttl); 
                Console.WriteLine("Don't fragment: {0}", serverResponse.Options.DontFragment); 
                Console.WriteLine("Buffer size: {0}", serverResponse.Buffer.Length); 
            } 
            else
                Console.WriteLine(serverResponse.Status); 
        } 
  
    } 
}

 

Conclusion:

In this article, we discussed all about the PingReply class and with the help of this class, we created a utility to know the status of our server.

Other languages

• C#: कैसे जाने एपीआई सर्वर उप है या डाउन (hi-IN)

---