Scheduled Testing

Scheduled Testing (Monitors)

Run API tests on a schedule to catch issues before your users do. Everything runs locally — no cloud infrastructure needed.

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Overview

Monitors are cron-based scheduled tasks that:

1. Run a collection or individual request on a schedule
2. Execute all assertions and tests
3. Notify you on failure (desktop notifications, webhooks)
4. Track results over time with charts

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Creating a Monitor

1. Right-click a collection or request in the sidebar
2. Select Schedule Monitor
3. Configure the schedule:
   • Name: "Production Health Check"
   • Schedule: Every 5 minutes / hourly / daily / custom cron
   • Environment: Select which environment to use
   • Notifications: Desktop notification on failure, webhook URL

Cron Expressions

Preset	Cron Expression	Description
Every minute	* * * * *	For critical endpoints
Every 5 minutes	*/5 * * * *	Standard monitoring
Every hour	0 * * * *	Moderate frequency
Every day at 9am	0 9 * * *	Daily checks
Every Monday 8am	0 8 * * 1	Weekly reports
Custom	Any valid cron	Full flexibility

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Monitor Dashboard

View all monitors in the Monitors panel:

• Status indicator: Green (all passing), Yellow (some failures), Red (critical)
• Last run: Time and result of the most recent execution
• Success rate: Percentage over the last 24h / 7d / 30d
• Average response time: Trend over time
• Charts: Response time and success rate graphs

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Notifications

Desktop Notifications

When a monitor detects a failure, you get an OS-level notification:

ApiArk Monitor Alert "Production Health Check" failed: GET /api/health returned 503

Webhook Notifications

Send alerts to Slack, Discord, PagerDuty, or any webhook endpoint:

Webhook URL: https://hooks.slack.com/services/T00/B00/xxxx

Webhook payload:

{
  "monitor": "Production Health Check",
  "status": "failed",
  "timestamp": "2026-03-13T12:00:00Z",
  "results": {
    "total": 5,
    "passed": 4,
    "failed": 1,
    "failedRequests": [
      {
        "name": "GET /api/health",
        "status": 503,
        "responseTime": 5234,
        "error": "Expected status 200 but got 503"
      }
    ]
  }
}

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Result History

Monitor results are stored in the local SQLite database:

• Response times over time
• Success/failure history
• Individual test results per run
• Export as CSV for analysis

Retention

• Last 30 days of detailed results
• Aggregated daily summaries kept for 1 year
• Configurable in Settings

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Offline Behavior

• Monitors run locally — they continue working even without internet (for localhost/LAN APIs)
• If the target API is unreachable, the monitor logs a network error
• Webhook notifications fail silently when offline — no error spam
• Desktop notifications always work (they're local)

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Tips

• Start with your most critical endpoints (health checks, auth)
• Use a dedicated "monitoring" environment with read-only credentials
• Set up Slack/Discord webhooks for team visibility
• Review response time trends weekly to catch gradual degradation
• Monitors run in the background — they don't block your work