Change the URL used to check for web connectivity

[gaurav]

• apybiomart version: 0.5.3
• Python version: 3.11.2
• Operating System: macOS Sonoma 14.1.1 on Intel

Description

apybiomart currently uses httpstat.us to check whether the computer is connected to the Internet:

apybiomart/apybiomart/classes.py

Line 46 in a1e65c4

url = "https://httpstat.us/200"

Unfortunately, httpstat.us has been offline somewhat frequently lately: aaronpowell/httpstatus#135

This a problem for my code, which runs apybiomart in a loop to download multiple datasets. If any of those connections fail because httpstat.us is down, my program cannot distinguish between an apybiomart incorrectly thinking it is offline and some other error that would require debugging.

I would suggest changing that to example.org (http://example.org/, see description at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com), which should be online more reliably.