What is AppDoctor
AppDoctor is a SaaS currently in development with the goal of helping software companies reach a state of proactive support. It is made up of three key pieces:
- Proxy(closed beta)
- Status(ui development)
- Tests(ui development)
Proxy
AppDoctor proxy allows you to proxy your request response cycle. By sending your requests through appdoctor you gain valuable insight into all parts of your application.
With advanced ways to search the data you can do things like:
- List all requests with a status > then 200 and that took longer then 10 seconds
- List all requests that contain a certain id or key piece of information.
- List all requests matching a regular expression on url. ie /users/*/comment/*
AppDoctor search is optimized to give sub second responses to even the most complex queries.
Along with allowing you to search all your request/response data you can also set notification rules so that you can take a true proactive approach and fix issues before they are reported. An example might be setting a notification rule to email your support team each time your credit card checkout responds with a 500 status. With this power you can proactively reach out to the affected user to resolve it before it causes other unexpected issues.
Proxy rules are advanced enough to cover every use case. If you find yourself lacking ability with the AppDoctor Assertion Language you can even write some Lua to truly do anything in your rules.
Status
To often does a user have to wonder if a site is down/slow for them or everyone. Companies often either do not have a status page or maintain and update one themselves manually. With the power of AppDoctor proxy you can set up health checks on any url and create status pages to show that information to your users. No longer do you need to update that your site is down. AppDoctor will automatically update url health for you. On top of reporting overall health of an application you can also expose information like average request speed or failure % if you feel inclined.
Tests
AppDoctor tests allow you to test live applications periodically and get notified the minute something is not working correctly. With periodic tests you will be able to proactive fix issues without a user ever having to run into them. Using the advanced features of AppDoctor Proxy you are able to write tests of any complexity. A small test may look like the following:
- register new user
- login with user from registration
- post a comment as logged in user
- delete comment as logged in user
- log out of user
- delete user account
With this test passing if all requests return status 200 in under 1 second. Using AppDoctor Assertion Language or Lua you can make tests as complex as needed. This includes test conditionals(run certain steps if X happens), sleep(wait to continue for x time), subtest(within current test run other tests suite) or end-if(short circuit test based on some condition).
Wrapping up
Currently we are doing things differently then most companies. We are in closed beta while developing the application. We will post a separate post covering the closed beta(including discounts and other cool things beta testers can expect for helping out).
If you are interested in helping us out during our closed beta email beta@appdoctor.io
Our hope is when the application is launched that we can help the SaaS world achieve a proactive approach!
Until next time. ✌️
