django-watchman

What it is and what it does

django-watchman is a Django app that adds a simple HTTP endpoint to your application that returns the health status of your backing infrastructure—databases, caches, and storage—as JSON. It's designed for external monitoring systems and infrastructure introspection, allowing you to check whether your application's dependencies are up and responding without needing to instrument your application code directly.

You install it as a Django app, add it to your URL configuration, and immediately get a `/watchman/` endpoint that reports the status of each configured service. The package has been in production use since 2014, supports modern Python (3.10–3.14) and Django versions (4.2, 5.1, 5.2), and carries no external dependencies beyond Django itself.

Use it for:

• Expose a health-check endpoint for load balancers or orchestration systems to verify application readiness before routing traffic.
• Monitor database and cache connectivity from external monitoring tools without adding custom instrumentation.
• Provide infrastructure visibility to operations teams via a secure URL that reports real-time service status.
• Integrate with uptime monitoring services that need a simple JSON endpoint to confirm all backing services are operational.
• Diagnose infrastructure issues quickly by checking which specific services (database, cache, storage) are failing.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

django-watchman exposes a status endpoint that reports the health of your application's backing services—databases, caches, storage—as JSON, enabling external monitoring and introspection.

Yes. django-watchman is a lightweight, production-tested package that solves a real operational need with minimal friction. It has no external dependencies beyond Django, carries a permissive license, is actively maintained, and supports current Python and Django versions. Install it if you need external monitoring of your application's backing services.

Install

django-watchman on PyPI

pip install django-watchman

uv add django-watchman

poetry add django-watchman

Installing django-watchman

Before you install

Low install friction: a pure Python wheel with only django as a runtime dependency. Actively maintained with recent commits and a stable release history since 2014; supports current Python versions (3.10–3.14) and recent Django versions (4.2, 5.1, 5.2).

License in practice

BSD-3-Clause is permissive and poses no restrictions on commercial or proprietary use; you may use, modify, and redistribute this package freely provided you include the license notice.

Quickstart

pip install django-watchman

# In settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'watchman',
)

# In urls.py
from django.urls import re_path, include
re_path(r'^watchman/', include('watchman.urls'))

# Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/watchman/ for JSON status

Verify before relying

• Whether custom health checks beyond databases, caches, and storage can be registered or extended.
• Authentication or authorization mechanisms available to restrict access to the status endpoint.
• Performance impact when monitoring many backing services or in high-traffic deployments.

Package facts

Evidence: django_watchman-1.5.0-py3-none-any.whl

Keywords: django, health-check, status, watchman

Tags

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