scout_api

A library for interacting with Scout, a hosted server monitoring service. Query for metric data, manage servers, and more.

Getting Started

Install the gem if you haven’t already:

gem install scout_api

Require the gem and authenticate to get your Scout on:

require 'scout_api'
scout = Scout::Account.new('youraccountname', '[email protected]', 'sekret')

Basics

You can query for the following high-level objects:

Each of the classes have Rails-like finder methods. For example:

# all servers
Scout::Server.all

# first server
Scout::Server.first

# first metric with ID=1
Scout::Metric.first(1)

# all groups with name =~ 'Web'
Scout::Group.all(:name => 'Web')

# all servers in a group (or groups) with group name =~ 'Web'
Scout::Server.all(:group_name => "Web")

Metrics

Access your metric data stored in Scout. You can retrieve data for a specific metric, a group of metrics, and aggregated metrics. For example:

# average value of the metric with ID=1 over the past hour
Scout::Metric.average(1)

# maximum rate of insert queries over the previous 24 hours
Scout::Server.first(:name => "DB Server").metrics.maximum(:name => 'inserts', 
:start => Time.now.utc-(24*3600)*2,:end => Time.now.utc-(24*3600) )

# average memory used across all servers in the 'web servers' group
Scout::Group.first(:name => 'web servers').metrics.average(:name => 'Memory Used')
Scout::Group.first(:name => 'web servers').metrics.average(:name => 'Memory Used').to_sparkline
Scout::Group.first(:name => 'web servers').metrics.average(:name => 'Memory Used').to_a

# total throughput across web servers
Scout::Group.first(:name => 'web servers').metrics.average(:name => 'request_rate', :aggregate => true)

Server Management

Create and delete servers:

# create a server using the server with id=6 as the template.
Scout::Server.create('heavy metal',:id => 6) => <#Scout::Server>

# delete the server with id=10
Scout::Server.delete(10)

Ruby Compatibility

scout_api has been tested against Ruby 1.8.7, and Ruby 1.9.2.

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

Fork the project.
Make your feature addition or bug fix.
Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.
Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.